THE     DOCTOR'S 
RECREATION    SERIES 


CHARLES    WELLS    MOULTON 

General  Editor 


J 


VOLUME      FOUR 


A^S^I./SMANfie.  ^tMJl. 


e&frf*.^-  r  .  -j-.    -!■  V  woci?  i  ccs-^f. 


PROI-.  Bii.LRofH^'  Surgical   CLtjfic 


ttt^wti. 


J 


A  Book  About 
DOCTORS 


irii^i 


«B 


Aullior  of  "Silit  Sral  Earb  ?B!inin."  "ffihc  fifol 

61j»UtB."  "A  Vaak  About  Vjata^na." 

ttt..  rtr. 


1904 

THE  SAALFIELD  PUBLISHING  CO. 

NEW  YORK  AKRON,  0.  CHICAGO 


/••.  :••  .• 


•     •     •         • 
*        • »•  •• 


»v  >.»  :»' 


COPYHGHT,     1904, 


THE    SAALFIELD    PUBLISHING   COMPANY 


Tmi 

wchner   companv 

Aknon,  o. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE. 


CHAPTER  I. 
Something  about  Sticks,  and  rather  less  about  Wigs     .      .       S 

CHAPTER  II. 
Early    English    Physicians l8 

CHAPTER  III. 
Sir  Thomas  Browne  and  Sir  Kenelm  Digby 38 

CHAPTER  IV. 
Sir  Hans   Sloane S' 

CHAPTER  V. 
The  Apothecaries  and  Sir  Samuel  Garth 63 

CHAPTER  VI. 
Quacks 82 

CHAPTER  VII. 

John    Radcliffe Ill 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
The  Doctor  as  a  bon-vivant 144 

CHAPTER  IX. 
Fees 163 

CHAPTER  X. 
Pedagogues  turned  Doctors 183 

CHAPTER  XI. 
The  Generosity  and  Parsimony  of  Physicians     ....  202 

CHAPTER  XII. 
Bleeding 225 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
Richard   Mead 239 

CHAPTER  XIV.       ,. 
Imagination  as  a  Remedial  Power 255 


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CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

CHAPTER  XV. 
Imagination  and  Nervous  Excitement — Mesmer       .     .     .  280 

CHAPTER  XVI. 
Make  way  for  the  Ladies! 287 

CHAPTER  XVIL 
Messenger  Monsey .  311 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 
Akensidc         327 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

Lettsoni 335 

CHAPTER  XX. 

A   few  More  Quacks 345 

CHAPTER  XXI. 
St.  John  Long 356 

CHAPTER  XXIL 
The  Quarrels  of  Physicians 374 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 
The  Loves  of  Physicians 393 

CHAPTER  XXIV. 
Literature  and  Art 4^1 

CHAPTER  XXV. 
Number  Eleven— a  Hospital  Story 442 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 
Medical  Buildings 462 

CHAPTER  XXVn. 
The  Country  Medical  Man .:    ..    ..;    .     •  478 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE 

Prof.  Billroth 's  Surgical  Clynic  *  .      Frontispiece 

From  the  Original  Painting  by  A.  F.  Seligmann. 

The  Founders  of  the   Medical   Society  of 

London 228 

From  the  Original  Painting. 

An   Accident* 258 

From  the  Original  Painting  by  Dagnan-  Vouveret. 

The  Anatomist 374 

From  the  Original  Painting  by  Max. 
•Original  by  courtesy  of  William  Wood  &  Co.,  New  York. 


PREFACE. 


The  writer  of  this  volume  has  endeavoured  to  col- 
lect, in  a  readable  and  attractive  form,  the  best  of 
those  medical  Ana  that  have  been  preserved  by  tra- 
dition or  literature.  In  doing  so,  he  has  not  only 
done  his  best  to  combine  and  classify  old  stories,  but 
also  cautiously  to  select  his  materials,  so  that  hia 
work,  while  affording  amusement  to  the  leisure  hours 
of  Doctors  learned  in  their  craft,  might  contain  no 
line  that  should  render  it  unfit  for  the  drawing-room 
table.  To  effect  this,  it  has  been  found  necessary  to 
reject  many  valuable  and  characteristic  anecdotes— 
some  of  them  entering  too  minutely  into  the  mysteries 
and  technicalities  of  medicine  and  surgery,  and  some 
being  spiced  with  a  humour  ill  calculated  to  please 
the  delicacy  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

Much  of  the  contents  of  this  volume  has  never  be- 
fore been  published,  but,  after  being  drawn  from  a 
variety  of  manuscript  sources,  is  now  for  the  first 
time  submitted  to  the  world.  It  would  be  difficult  to 
enumerate  all  the  persons  to  whom  the  writer  is  in- 
debted for  access  to  documents,  suggestions,  critical 
notes,  or  memoranda.  He  cannot,  however,  let  the 
present  occasion  go  by  without  expressing  his  grati- 
tude to  the  College  of  Physicians,  for  the  prompt  ur- 
banity with  which  they  allowed  him  to  inspect  the 
treasures  of  their  library.  To  Dr.  Munk,  the  learned 
librarian  of  the  College — who  for  many  years,  in  the 


IV.  PREFACE. 

scant  leisure  allowed  him  by  the  urgent  demands  of 
an  extensive  practice,  has  found  a  dignified  pastime 
in  antiquarian  and  biographic  research— the  writer's 
best  thanks  are  due.  With  a  liberality  by  no  means 
always  found  iu  a  student  possessed  of  "special  in- 
formation,'' the  Doctor  surrendered  his  precious 
stores  to  the  use  of  a  comparative  stranger,  appar- 
ently without  even  thinking  of  the  value  of  his  gift. 
But  even  more  than  to  the  librarian  of  the  College 
of  Physicians  the  writer  is  indebted  for  assistance  to 
his  very  kind  friend  Dr.  Diamond,  of  Twickenham 
House— a  gentleman  who,  to  all  the  best  qualities  of 
a  complete  physician,  unites  the  graces  of  a  scholarly 
mind,  an  enthusiasm  for  art,  and  the  fascinations  of 
a  generous  nature. 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS, 


CHAPTER  I. 

SOMETHING    ABOUT    STICKS,     AND    RATHER    LESS     ABOUT 
WIGS. 

Properly  treated  and  fully  expanded,  this  sub- 
ject of  "the  stick"  would  cover  all  the  races 
of  man  in  all  regions  and  all  ages;  indeed, 
it  would  hide  every  member  of  the  human  family. 
Attention  could  be  called  to  the  respect  accord- 
ed in  every  chapter  of  the  world's  history,  sacred  and 
profane,  to  the  rahdos — to  the  fasces  of  the  Roman 
lictors,  which  every  school-boy  honours  (often  uncon- 
sciously) with  an  allusion  when  he  says  he  will  lick, 
or  vows  he  won't  be  licked,— to  the  herald's  staff  of 
Hermes,  the  caduceus  of  Mercury,  the  wand  of  ^s- 
culapius,  and  the  rods  of  Moses  and  the  contending 
sorcerers— to  the  mystic  bundles  of  nine  twigs,  in 
honour  of  the  nine  muses,  that  Dr.  Busby  loved  to 
wield,  and  which  many  a  simple  English  parent  be- 
lieves Solomon,  in  all  his  glory,  recommended  as  an 
element  in  domestic  jurisdiction— to  the  sacred  wands 


6  A   BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

of  savage  tribes,  the  staffs  of  our  constables  and 
sheriffs,  and  the  highly  polished  gold  sticks  and  black 
rods  that  hover  about  the  anterooms  of  St.  James's 
cr  Portsoker..  .The  "ule  of  thumb  has  been  said  to  be 
the  government  of  this  world.  And  what  is  this 
tturab.buta  shprt  stii'k,  a  sceptre,  emblematic  of  a 
sovereign  authority  .vhich  none  dares  to  dispute? 
"The  stick,"  says  the  Egyptian  proverb,  "came  down 
from  heaven." 

The  only  sticks,  however,  that  we  here  care  to 
speak  about  are  physicians'  canes,  barbers'  poles,  and 
the  twigs  of  rue  which  are  still  strewn  before  the  pris- 
oner in  the  dock  of  a  criminal  court.  Why  should 
they  be  thus  strung  together  ? 

The  physician's  cane  is  a  very  ancient  part  of  his 
insignia.  It  is  now  disused,  but  up  to  very  recent 
times  no  doctor  of  medicine  presumed  to  pay  a  pro- 
fessional visit,  or  even  to  be  seen  in  public,  without 
this  mystic  wand.  Long  as  a  footman's  stick,  smooth 
and  varnished,  with  a  heavy  gold  knob  or  cross-bar  at 
the  top,  it  was  an  instrument  with  which,  down  to  the 
present  century,  every  prudent  aspirant  to  medical 
practice  was  provided.  The  celebrated  "gold-headed 
cane"  which  Radcliffe,  Mead,  Askew,  Piteairn  and 
Baillie  successively  bore  is  preserved  in  the  College  of 
Physicians,  bearing  the  arms  which  those  gentlemen 
assumed,  or  were  entitled  to.  In  one  respect  it  de- 
viated from  the  physician's  cane  proper.  It  has  a 
cross-bar  almost  like  a  crook;  whereas  a  physician's 
wand  ought  to  have  a  knob  at  the  top.  This  knob  in 
olden  times  was  hollow,  and  contained  a  vinaigrette, 
which  the  man  of  science  always  held  to  his  nose  when 
he  approached  a  sick  person,  so  that  its  fumes  might 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  7 

protect  him  from  the  noxious  exhalations  of  his  pa- 
tient. We  know  timid  people  who,  on  the  same  plan, 
have  their  handkerchiefs  washed  in  camphor-water, 
and  bury  their  faces  in  them  whenever  they  pass  the 
corner  of  a  dingy  street,  or  cross  an  open  drain,  or 
come  in  contact  with  an  ill-looking  man.  AVhen  How- 
ard, the  philanthropist,  visited  Exeter,  he  found  that 
the  medical  officer  of  the  county  gaol  had  caused  a 
clause  to  be  inserted  in  his  agreement  with  the  mag- 
istrates, exonerating  him  from  attendance  and  ser- 
vices during  any  outbreak  of  the  gaol  fever.  Most 
likely  this  gentleman,  by  books  or  experience,  had 
been  enlightened  as  to  the  inefficacy  of  the  vinai- 
grette. 

But  though  the  doctor,  like  a  soldier  skulking  from 
the  field  of  battle,  might  with  impunity  decline  visit- 
ing the  wretched  captives,  the  judge  was  forced  to  do 
his  part  of  the  social  duty  to  them — to  sit  in  their 
presence  during  their  trial  in  a  close,  fetid  court;  to 
brow-beat  them  when  they  presumed  to  make  any 
declaration  of  their  innocence  beyond  a  brief  "not 
guilty";  to  read  them  an  energetic  homily  on  the  con- 
sequences of  giving  way  to  corrupt  passions  and  evil 
manners ;  and,  finally,  to  order  them  their  proper  ap- 
portionments of  whipping,  or  incarceration,  or  ban- 
ishment, or  death.  Such  was  the  abominable  condi- 
tion of  our  prisons,  that  the  poor  creatures  dragged 
from  them  and  placed  in  the  dock  often  by  the  nox- 
ious effluvia  of  their  bodies  made  seasoned  criminal 
lawyers  turn  pale— partly,  perhaps,  through  fear, 
but  chiefly  through  physical  discomfort.  Then  arose 
the  custom  of  sprinkling  aromatic  herbs  before  the 
prisoners— so  that  if  the  health  of  his  Lordship  and 


8  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

the  gentlemen  of  the  long  robe  suffered  from  the 
tainted  atmosphere,  at  least  their  senses  of  smell 
might  be  shocked  as  little  as  possible.  Then,  also, 
came  the  chaplain's  bouquet,  with  which  that  rever- 
end officer  was  always  provided  when  accompanying 
a  criminal  to  Tyburn.  Coke  used  to  go  circuit  carry- 
ing in  his  hand  an  enormous  fan  furnished  with  a 
handle,  in  the  shape  of  a  goodly  stick— the  whole 
forming  a  weapon  of  offence  or  defence.  It  is  not 
improbable  that  the  shrewd  lawyer  caused  the  end  of 
this  cumbrous  instrument  to  be  furnished  with  a 
vinaigrette. 

So  much  for  the  head  of  the  physician's  cane.  The 
stick  itself  was  doubtless  a  relic  of  the  conjuring  par- 
aphernalia with  which  the  healer,  in  ignorant  and 
superstitious  times,  worked  upon  the  imagination  of 
the  credulous.  Just  as  the  IJ  which  the  doctor  affixes 
to  his  prescription  is  the  old  astrological  sign  (ill- 
drawn)  of  Jupiter,  so  his  cane  descended  to  him  from 
Hermes  and  Mercurius.  It  was  a  relic  of  old  jugglery, 
and  of  yet  older  religion— one  of  those  baubles  which 
we  know  well  where  to  find,  but  which  our  conserva- 
tive tendencies  disincline  us  to  sweep  away  without 
some  grave  necessity. 

The  charming-stick,  the  magic  ^Esculapian  wand  of 
the  Medicine-man,  differed  in  shape  and  significance 
from  the  pole  of  the  barber-surgeon.  In  the  "British 
Apollo,"  1703,  No.  3,  we  read:— 

"I'd  know  why  he  that  selleth  ale 
Hangs  out  a  chequer'd  part  per  pale: 
And  why  a  barber  at  port-hole 
Puts  forth  a  parti-coloured  pole? 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTOES. 


"In  ancient  Rome,  when  men  loved  fighting, 
And  wounds  and  scars  took  much  delight  in, 
Man-menders   then  had  noble  pay — 
Which  we  call  surgeons  to  this  d?y. 
'Twas  order'd  that  a  huge  long  pole. 
With  basin   deck'd,  should  grace  the  hole. 
To  guide  the  wounded,  who  unlopt 
Could  walk,  on  stumps  the  other  hopt; 
But  when  they  ended  all  their  wars, 
And  men  grew  out  of  love  with  scars. 
Their  trade  decaying,  to  keep  swimming. 
They  joined  the  other  trade  of  trimming; 
And  to  their  poles,  to  publish  either. 
Thus  twisted   both   their  trades  together." 

The  principal  objection  that  can  be  made  to  this 
answer  is  that  it  leaves  the  question  unanswered, 
after  making  only  a  very  lame  attempt  to  answer  it. 
Lord  Thurlow,  in  a  speech  delivered  in  the  House  of 
Peers  on  17th  of  July,  1797,  opposing  the  surgeons' 
incorporation  bill,  said  that,  "By  a  statute  still  in 
force,  the  barbers  and  surgeons  were  each  to  use  a 
pole.  The  barbers  were  to  have  theirs  blue  and  white, 
striped  with  no  other  appendage;  but  the  surgeons', 
which  was  the  same  in  other  respects,  was  likewise  to 
have  a  gallipot  and  a  red  rag,  to  denote  the  particular 
nature  of  their  vocation." 

But  the  reason  why  the  surgeon's  pole  was  adorned 
with  both  blue  and  red  seems  to  have  escaped  tha 
Chancellor.  The  chirurgical  pole,  properly  tricked, 
ought  to  have  a  line  of  blue  paint,  another  of  red,  and 
a  third  of  white,  winding  round  its  length,  in  a  reg- 
ular serpentine  progression — the  blue  representing 
the  venous  blood,  the  more  brilliant  colour  the  arter- 
ial, and  the  white  thread  being  symbolic  of  the  band- 
age used  in  tying  up  the  arm  after  withdrawing  the 
ligature.     The  stick  itself  is  a  sign  that  the  operator 


10  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

possesses  a  stout  staff  for  his  patients  to  hold,  con- 
tinually tightening  and  relaxing  their  grasp  during 
the  operation— accelerating  the  flow  of  the  blood  by 
the  muscular  action  of  the  arm.  The  phlebotomist's 
staff  is  of  great  antiquity.  It  is  to  be  found  amongst 
his  properties,  in  an  illuminated  rji:sr.l  of  the  time  of 
Edward  the  First,  and  in  an  engraving  of  the 
"Comenii  Orbis  Pictus." 

Possibly  in  ancient  times  the  phj'sician's  cane  and 
the  surgeon's  club  were  used  more  actively.  For 
many  centuries  fustigation  was  believed  in  as  a  sov- 
ereign remedy  for  bodily  ailment  as  well  as  moral 
failings,  and  a  beating  was  prescribed  for  an  ague  as 
frequently  as  for  picking  and  stealing.  This  process 
Antonius  Musa  employed  to  cure  Octavius  Augustus 
of  Sciatica.  Thomas  Campanella  believed  that  it  had 
the  same  effect  as  colocynth  administered  internally. 
Galen  recommended  it  as  a  means  of  fattening  people. 
Gordonius  prescribed  it  in  certain  cases  of  nervous 
irritability— "Si  sit  juvenis,  et  non  vult  obedire,  flag- 
elletur  frequenter  et  fortiter."  In  some  rural  dis- 
tricts ignorant  mothers  still  flog  the  feet  of  their  chil- 
dren to  cure  them  of  chilblains.  And  there  remains 
on  record  a  case  in  which  club-tincture  produced  ex- 
cellent results  on  a  young  patient  to  whom  Desault 
gave  a  liberal  dose  of  it. 

In  1792,  when  Sir  Astley  Cooper  was  in  Paris,  he 
attended  the  lectures  of  Desault  and  Chopart  in  the 
Hotel  Dieu.  On  one  occasion,  during  this  part  of 
his  student  course,  Cooper  saw  a  young  fellow,  of 
some  sixteen  years  of  age,  brought  before  Desault 
complaining  of  paralysis  in  his  right  arm.  Suspect- 
ing that  the  boy  was  only  shamming,  "Abraham," 


A.  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  11 

Desault  observed,  unconcernedly,  "Otez  votre 
chapeau. " 

Forgetting  his  paralytic  story,  the  boy  instantly 
obeyed,  and  ancovered  his  head. 

"Donnez  moi  un  baton!"  screamed  Desault;  and 
he  beat  the  boy  unmercifully. 

"D'ou  venez  vous?"  inquired  the  operator  when 
the  castigation  was  brought  to  a  close. 

"Faubourg  de  St.  Antoine,"  was  the  answer. 

"Oui,  je  le  crois,"  replied  Desault,  with  a  shrug- 
speaking  a  truth  experience  had  taught  him— "tous 
les  coquins  viennent  de  ce  quartier  la. ' ' 

But  enough  for  the  present  of  the  barber-surgeon 
and  his  pole.  "Tollite  barberum," — as  Bonnel 
Thornton  suggested,  when  in  1745  (a  year  barbarous 
in  more  ways  than  one),  the  surgeons,  on  being  dis- 
joined from  the  barbers,  were  asking  what  ought  to 
be  their  motto. 

Next  to  his  cane,  the  physician's  ^vig  was  the  most 
important  of  his  accoutrements.  It  gave  profound 
learning  and  wise  thought  to  lads  just  out  of  their 
teens.  As  the  horse-hair  skull-cap  gives  idle  Mr. 
Briefless  all  the  acuteness  and  gravity  of  aspect  which 
one  looks  for  in  an  attorney-general,  so  the  doctor's 
artificial  locks  were  to  him  a  crown  of  honour.  One 
of  the  Dukes  of  Holstein,  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
just  missed  destruction  through  being  warned  not  to 
put  on  his  head  a  poisoned  wig  which  a  traitorous 
peruke-maker  offered  him.  To  test  the  value  of  the 
advice  given  him,  the  Duke  had  the  wig  put  upon  th« 
head  of  its  fabricator.  Within  twelve  minutes  the 
man  expired!    "We  have  never  heard  of  a  physician 


12  A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

finding  death  in  a  wig;  but  a  doctor  who  found  the 
means  of  life  in  one  is  no  rare  bird  in  history. 

"Each  son  of  Sol,  to  make  him  look  more  big. 
Had  on  a  large,  grave,  decent,  three-tailed  wig ; 
His  clothes  full-trimmed,  with  button-holes  behind, 
Stiff  were  the  skirts,  with  buckram  stoutly  lined; 
The  cloth-cut  velvet,  or  more  reverend  black. 
Full-made,  and  powder'd  half-way  down  his  back; 
Large  decent  cuffs,  which  near  the  ground  did  reach, 
With  half  a  dozen  buttons  fix'd  on  each. 
Grave  were  their  faces — fix'd  in  solemn  state. 
These  men  struck  awe ;  their  children  carried  weight, 
In  reverend  wigs  old  heads  young  shoulders  bore. 
And  twenty-five  or  thirty  seemed  threescore." 

The  three-tailed  wig  was  the  one  worn  by  Will  At- 
kins, the  gout  doctor  in  Charles  the  Second's  time 
(a  good  specialty  then!).  "Will  Atkins  lived  in  the 
Old  Bailey,  and  had  a  vast  practice.  Ilis  nostrums, 
some  of  which  were  composed  of  thirty  different  in- 
gredients, were  wonderful— but  far  less  so  than  his 
wig,  which  was  combed  and  frizzled  over  each  cheek. 
When  Will  walked  about  the  town,  visiting  his  pa- 
tients, he  sometimes  carried  a  cane,  but  never  wore  a 
hat.  Such  an  article  of  costume  would  have  disar- 
ranged the  beautiful  locks,  or.  at  least,  have  obscured 
their  glory. 

"Physic  of  old  her  entry  made 
Beneath   th'   immense   full-bottom's   shade; 
While  the  gilt  cane,  with  solemn  pride. 
To  each   sagacious  nose  applied, 
Seem'd  but  a  necessary  prop 
To  bear  the  weight  of  wig  at  top." 

One  of  the  most  magnificent  wigs  on  record  was 
that  of  Colonel  Dalmahoy,  which  was  celebrated  in  a 
song  beginning:— 

"If  you  would  see  a  noble  wig, 
And   in   that    wig   a    man   look  big, 


A  BUUK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  13 

To  Ludgate  Hill   repair,  my  joy, 
And  gaze  on  Col'nel  Dalmahoy." 

On  Ludgate  Hill,  in  close  proximity  to  the  Hall  of 
the  Apothecaries  in  Water  Lane,  the  Colonel  vend- 
ed drugs  and  nostrums  of  all  sorts — sweetmeats, 
washes  for  the  complexion,  scented  oil  for  the  hair, 
pomades,  love-drops,  and  charms.  Wadd,  the  humor- 
ous collector  of  anecdotes  relating  to  his  profession, 
records  of  him- — 

"Dalmahoy   sold  infusions   and   lotions, 
Decoctions,  and  gargles,  and  pills ; 
Electuaries,   powders,  and  potions. 
Spermaceti,  salts,  scammony,  squills. 

"Horse-aloes,  burnt  alum,  agaric, 

Balm,  benzoine,  blood-stone,  and  dill; 
Castor,  camphor,  and  acid  tartaric. 
With  specifics  for  every  ill. 

"But  with  all  his  specifics  in  store. 

Death  on  Dalmahoy  one  day  did  pop; 
And  although  he  had  doctors  a  score, 
Made  poor  Dalmahoy  shut  up  his  shop." 

The  last  silk-coated  physician  was  Henry  Revell 
Reynolds,  M.  D.,  one  of  the  physicians  who  attended 
George  III.  during  his  long  and  melancholy  aflSiction. 
Though  this  gentleman  came  quite  down  to  living 
times,  he  persisted  to  the  end  in  wearing  the  costume 
—of  a  well-powdered  wig,  silk  coat,  breeches,  stock- 
ings, buckled  shoes,  gold-headed  cane,  and  lace  ruffles 
—with  which  he  commenced  his  career.  He  was  the 
Brummel  of  the  Faculty,  and  retained  his  fondness 
for  delicate  apparel  to  the  last.  Even  in  his  grave- 
clothes  the  coxcombical  tastes  of  the  man  exhibited 
themselves.  His  very  cerements  were  of  "a  good 
make." 


14  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

"Here  well-dressed   Reyiiolds   lies. 
As  great  a  beau  as  ever; 
We  may  perhaps  see  one  as  wise, 
But  sure  a  smarter  never." 

Whilst  Brocklesby's  wig  is  still  bobbing  about  in 
the  distance,  we  may  as  well  tell  a  good  story  of  him. 
He  was  an  eccentric  man,  with  many  good  points,  one 
of  which  was  his  friendship  for  Dr.  Johnson.  The 
Duchess  of  Richmond  requested  Brocklesby  to  visit 
her  maid,  who  was  so  ill  that  she  could  not  leave  her 
bed.  The  physician  proceeded  forthwith  to  Rich- 
mond House,  in  obedience  to  the  command.  On  ar- 
riving there  he  was  shown  up-stairs  by  the  invalid's 
husband,  who  held  the  post  of  valet  to  the  Duke.  The 
man  was  a  very  intelligent  fellow,  a  character  with 
whom  all  visitors  to  Richmond  House  conversed 
freely,  and  a  vehement  politician.  In  this  last  char- 
acteristic the  Doctor  resembled  him.  Slowly  the  phy- 
sician and  the  valet  ascended  the  staircase,  discussing 
the  fate  of  parties,  and  the  merits  of  ministers.  They 
became  excited,  and  declaiming  at  the  top  of  theiu 
voices  entered  the  sick  room.  The  valet— forgetful 
of  his  marital  duties  in  the  delights  of  an  intellectual 
contest — poured  in  a  broadside  of  sarcasms,  ironical 
inquiries,  and  red-hot  declamation;  the  doctor— with 
true  English  pluck — returning  fire,  volley  for  volley. 
The  battle  lasted  for  upwards  of  an  hour,  when  the 
two  combatants  walked  down-stairs,  and  the  man  of 
medicine  took  his  departure.  When  the  doctor  ar- 
rived at  his  door,  and  was  stepping  from  his  carriage, 
it  flashed  across  his  mind  that  he  had  not  applied  his 
finger  to  his  patient's  pulse,  or  even  asked  her  how 
she  felt  herself! 

Previous  to  Charles  II. 's  reign  physicians  were  in 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTOES.  15 

the  habit  of  visiting  their  patients  on  horse-back,  sit- 
ting sideways  on  foot-cloths  like  women.  Simeon  Fox 
and  Dr.  Argent  were  the  last  Presidents  of  the  Col- 
lege of  Physicians  to  go  their  rounds  in  this  undigni- 
fied manner.  With  the  "Restoration"  came  the  car- 
riage of  the  London  physician.  The  Lex  Talionis 
says,  "For  there  must  now  be  a  little  coach  and  two 
horses;  and,  being  thus  attended,  haif-a-piece,  their 
usual  fee,  is  but  ill-taken,  and  popped  into  their  left 
pocket,  and  possibly  may  cause  the  patient  to  send 
for  his  worship  twice  before  he  will  come  again  to 
the  hazard  of  another  angel." 

The  fashion,  once  commenced,  soon  prevailed.  In 
Queen  Anne's  reign,  no  physician  with  the  slightest 
pretensions  to  practice  could  manage  without  his 
chariot  and  four,  sometimes  even  six,  horses.  In  our 
own  day  an  equipage  of  some  sort  is  considered  so 
necessary  an  appendage  to  a  medical  practitioner, 
that  a  physician  without  a  carriage  (or  a  fly  that  can 
pass  muster  for  one)  is  looked  on  with  suspicion.  He 
is  marked  down  mauvais  sujet  in  the  same  list  with 
clergjTnen  without  duty,  barristers  without  chambers, 
and  gentlemen  whose  Irish  tenantry  obstinately  re- 
fuse to  keep  them  supplied  with  money.  On  the 
whole  the  carriage  system  is  a  good  one.  It  protects 
stair  carpets  from  being  soiled  with  muddy  boots  (a 
great  thing!),  and  bears  cruelly  on  needy  aspirants 
after  professional  employment  (a  yet  greater  thing! 
and  one  that  manifestly  ought  to  be  the  object  of  all 
professional  etiquette!).  If  the  early  struggles  of 
many  fashionable  physicians  were  fully  and  courage- 
ously written,  we  should  have  some  heart-rending 
stories  of  the  screwing  and  scraping  and  shifts  by 


16  A   BOOK   ^VBOUT  DOCTORS. 

which  their  first  equipages  were  maintained.  Who 
hasn't  heard  of  the  darling  doctor  who  taught  sing- 
ing under  tlie  moustachioed  and  bearded  guise  of  an 
Italian  Count,  at  a  young  ladies'  school  at  Clapham, 
in  order  that  he  might  make  his  daily  West-end  calls 
between  3  p.  m.  and  6  p.  m.  in  a  well-built  brougham 
drawn  by  a  fiery  steed  from  a  livery  stable?  There 
was  one  noted  case  of  a  young  physician  who  pro- 
vided himself  with  the  means  of  figuring  in  a  brough- 
am during  the  llay-fair  morning,  by  condescending 
to  the  garb  and  duties  of  a  flyman  during  the  hours 
of  darkness.  He  used  the  same  carriage  at  both 
periods  of  the  four-and-twenty  hours,  lolling  in  it  by 
daylight,  and  sitting  on  it  by  gaslight.  The  poor 
fellow  forgetting  himself  on  one  occasion,  so  far  as 
to  jump  in  when  he  ought  to  have  jumped  on,  or 
jump  0)1  when  he  ought  to  have  jumped  m,  he  pub- 
lished his  delicate  secret  to  an  unkind  world. 

It  is  a  rash  thing  for  a  young  man  to  start  his  car- 
riage, unless  he  is  sure  of  being  able  to  sustain  it  for  a 
dozen  years.  To  drop  it  is  sure  destruction.  We  re- 
member an  ambitious  Phaeton  of  Hospitals  who  as- 
tonished tlie  world— not  only  of  his  profession,  but 
of  all  London— with  an  equipage  fit  for  an  ambassa- 
dor—the vehicle  and  the  steeds  being  obtained,  like 
the  arms  blazoned  on  his  panels,  upon  credit.  Six 
years  afterwards  he  was  met  by  a  friend  crushing  the 
mud  on  the  ilarylebone  pavements,  and  with  a  char- 
acteristic assurance,  that  even  adversity  was  unable 
to  deprive  him  of,  said  that  his  health  was  so  much 
deranged  that  his  dear  friend,  Sir  James  Clarke,  had 
prescribed  continual  walking  exercise  for  him  as  the 
only  means  of   recovering  his  powers  of  digestion. 


A  BOOK  ^VBOUT  DOCTORS.  17 

His  friends— good-natured  people,  as  friends  always 
are — observed  that  "it  was  a  pity  Sir  James  hadn't 
given  him  the  advice  a  few  years  sooner— prevention 
being  better  than  cure." 

Though  physicians  began  generally  to  take  to  car- 
riages in  Charles  II. 's  reign,  it  may  not  be  supposed 
that  no  doctor  of  medicine  before  that  time  exper- 
ienced the  motion  of  a  wheeled  carriage.  In  "Stowe's 
Survey  of  London"  one  may  read:— 

"In  the  year  1563,  Dr.  Langton,  a  physician,  rid  in 
a  ear,  with  a  gown  of  damask,  lined  with  velvet,  and 
a  coat  of  velvet,  and  a  cap  of  the  same  (such,  it  seems, 
doctors  then  wore),  but  having  a  blue  hood  pinned 
over  his  cap;  which  was  (as  it  seems)  a  customary 
mark  of  guilt.  And  so  came  through  Cheapside  on  a 
market-day." 

The  doctor's  offence  was  one  against  public  morals. 
He  had  loved  not  wisely— but  too  well.  The  same 
generous  weakness  has  brought  learned  doctors,  since 
Langton 's  day,  into  extx'emely  ridiculous  positions. 

The  cane,  wig,  silk  coat,  stockings,  side-saddle,  and 
carriage,  of  the  old  physician  have  been  mentioned. 
We  may  not  pass  over  his  muff  in  silence.  That  hQ 
might  have  his  hands  warm  and  delicate  of  touch, 
and  so  be  able  to  discriminate  to  a  nicety  the  qualities 
of  his  patient's  arterial  pulsations,  he  made  his 
rounds,  in  cold  weather,  holding  before  him  a  large 
fur  muff,  in  which  his  fingers  and  fore-arm  were 
concealed. 

4—2 


CHAPTER  II. 

EARLY    ENGLISH    PHYSICIANS. 

"Medicine  is  a  science  which  hath  been,  as  we  have  said,  more 
professed  than  laboured,  and  yet  more  laboured  than  ad- 
vanced ;  the  labour  having  been,  in  my  judgment,  rather  in 
circle  than  in  progression.  For  I  find  much  iteration,  and 
small  progression." — Lord  Bacon's  Advancement  of  Learn- 
ing. 

The  British  doctor,  however,  does  not  make 
his  first  appearance  in  sable  dress  and  full-bot- 
tomed wig.  Chaucer's  physician,  who  was  "groundit 
in  Astronomy  and  Magyk  Naturel,"  and  whose 
"study  was  but  lytyl  in  the  Bible,"  had  a  far  smarter 
and  more  attractive  dress. 

"In  sanguyn  and  in  perse  he  clad  was  al, 
Lined  with  taffata  and  with  sendal." 

Taffeta  and  silk,  of  crimson  and  sky-blue  colour, 
must  have  given  an  imposing  appearance  to  this  wor- 
thy gentleman,  who,  resembling  many  later  doctors 
in  his  disuse  of  the  Bible,  resembled  them  also  in  his 
love  of  fees. 

"And  yit  he  was  but  csy  of  dispence. 
He  kepte  that  he  won  in   pestelence; 
For  gold  in  physik  is  a  cordial; 
Therefore  he  lovede  gold  in  special.'' 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  19 

Amongst  our  more  celebrated  and  learned  English 
physicians  was  John  Phreas,  born  about  the  com- 
mencement of  the  fifteenth  century,  and  educated  at 
Oxford,  where  he  obtained  a  fellowship  on  the  found- 
ation of  Balliol  College.  His  M.  D.  degree  he  ob- 
tained in  Padua,  and  the  large  fortune  he  made  by 
the  practice  of  physic  was  also  acquired  in  Italy.  He 
was  a  poet  and  an  accomplished  scholar.  Some  of  his 
epistles  in  j\IS.  are  still  preserved  in  the  Balliol  Li- 
brary and  at  the  Bodleian.  His  translation  of  Dio- 
dorus  Siculus,  dedicated  to  Paul  II.,  procured  for  him 
from  that  pontitY  the  fatal  gift  of  an  English  bish- 
opric. A  disappointed  candidate  for  the  same  pre- 
ferment is  said  to  have  poisoned  him  before  the  day 
appointed  for  his  consecration. 

Of  Thomas  Linacre,  successively  physician  to 
Henry  VII.,  Henry  VIII.,  Edward  VI.,  and  Princess 
Mary,  the  memory  is  still  green  amongst  men.  At  his 
request,  in  conjunction  with  the  representations  of 
John  Chambre,  Pernandus  de  Victoria,  Nicholas 
Halswell,  John  Praunces,  Robert  Yaxley  (physi- 
cians), and  Cardinal  Wolsey,  Henry  VIII.  granted 
letters  patent,  establishing  the  College  of  Physicians, 
and  conferring  on  its  membei"s  the  sole  privilege  of 
practicing,  and  admitting  persons  to  practice,  within 
the  city,  and  a  circuit  of  seven  miles.  The  college 
also  was  empowered  to  license  practitioners  through- 
out the  kingdom,  save  such  as  were  graduates  of  Ox- 
ford and  Cambridge — who  were  to  be  exempt  from 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  new  college,  save  within  Lon- 
don and  its  precincts.  Linacre  was  the  first  President 
of  the  College  of  Physicians.     The  meetings  of  the 


20  A  BOOK  ABO  IT  DOCTORS. 

learned  corporation  were  held  at  Linacre's  private 
house,  No.  5,  Kniglit-Rider  Street,  Doctors'  Com- 
mons. This  house  (on  which  the  Physician's  arms, 
granted  by  Christopher  Barker,  Garter  King-at-arms, 
Sept.  20,  1546,  may  still  be  seen,)  was  bequeathed  to 
the  college  by  Linacre,  and  long  remained  their  prop- 
erty and  abode.  The  original  charter  of  the  brother- 
hood states:  "Before  this  period  a  great  multitude  of 
ignorant  persons,  of  whom  the  greater  part  had  no 
insight  into  physic,  nor  into  any  other  kind  of  learn- 
ing— some  could  not  even  read  the  letters  and  the 
book— so  far  forth,  that  common  artificers,  as  smiths, 
weavers  and  women,  boldly  and  accustomably  took 
upon  them  great  cures,  to  the  high  displeasure  of  God, 
great  infamy  of  the  Faculty,  and  the  grievous  hurt, 
damage,  and  destruction  of  many  of  the  king's  liege 
people." 

Linacre  died  in  the  October  of  1524.  Caius,  writ- 
ing his  epitaph,  concludes,  "Fraudes  dolosque  mire 
perosus,  fidus  amicis,  omnibus  juxta  charus;  aliquot 
annos  antequam  obierat  Presbyter  factus;  plenua 
annes,  ex  hac  vita  migravit,  multum  desideratus. " 
His  motive  for  taking  holy  orders  towards  the  latter 
part  of  his  life  is  unknown.  Possible  he  imagined  the 
sacerdotal  garb  would  be  a  secure  and  comfortable 
clothing  in  the  grave.  Certainly  he  was  not  a  pro- 
found theologian.  A  short  while  before  his  death  he 
read  the  New  Testament  for  the  first  time,  when  so 
great  was  his  astonishment  at  finding  the  rules  of 
Christians  widely  at  variance  with  their  practice, 
that  he  threw  the  sacred  volume  from  him  in  a  pas- 
sion, and  exclaimed,  "Either  this  is  not  the  gospel, 
or  we  are  not  Christians." 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  21 

Of  the  generation  next  succeeding  Linacre's  was 
John  Kaye,  or  Key  (or  Caius,  as  it  has  been  long  pe- 
'dantically  spelt).  Like  Linacre  (the  elegant  writer 
and  intimate  friend  of  Erasmus),  Caius  is  associated 
with  letters  not  less  than  medicine.  Born  of  a  re- 
spectable Norfolk  family,  Caius  raised,  on  the  foun- 
dation of  Gonvil  Hall,  the  college  in  the  University 
of  Cambridge  that  bears  his  name— to  which  Eastern 
Counties'  men  do  mostly  resort.  Those  who  know 
Cambridge  remember  the  quaint  humour  with  which, 
in  obedience  to  the  founder's  will,  the  gates  of  Caius 
are  named.  As  a  president  of  the  College  of  Physi- 
cians, Caius  was  a  zealous  defender  of  the  rights  of 
his  order.  It  has  been  suggested  that  Shakespeare's 
Dr.  Caius,  in  "The  IMerry  Wives  of  Windsor,"  was 
produced  in  resentment  towards  the  president,  for 
his  excessive  fervor  against  the  surgeons. 

Caius  terminated  his  laborious  and  honourable 
career  on  July  the  29th,  1573,  in  the  sixty-third  year 
of  his  age.*  He  was  buried  in  his  college  chapel,  in 
a  tomb  constructed  some  time  before  his  decease,  and 
marked  with  the  brief  epitaph— "Fui  Caius."  In 
the  same  year  in  which  this  physician  of  Edward  VI., 
Mary,  and  Elizabeth  died,  was  born  Theodore  Tur- 
quet  de  Mayerne,  Baron  Aulbone  of  France,  and  Sir 
Theodore  Mayerne  in  England.  Of  Mayerne  mention 
will  be  made  in  various  places  of  these  pages.  There 
is    some    difficulty    in    ascertaining    to    how    many 


*  In  Dr.  Moussett's  "Health's  Improvement;  or  Rules  con- 
cerning Food"  is  a  curious  passage  relating  to  this  eminent 
physician's  decay. 


22  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

crowned  heads  Ihis  lucky  courtier  was  appointed  phy- 
sician. After  leaving  France  and  permanently  fixing 
himself  in  England,  he  kept  up  his  connection  with 
the  French,  so  that  the  list  of  his  monarch-patients 
may  be  said  to  comprise  two  French  and  three  Eng- 
lish sovereigns— Henry  IV.  and  Louis  XIII.  of 
France,  and  James  I.,  Charles  I.,  and  Charles  II.  of 
England.  Mayerne  died  at  Chelsea,  in  the  eighty- 
second  year  of  his  age,  on  the  15th  of  March,  1655. 
Like  John  Hunter,  he  was  buried  in  the  church  of  St. 
Martin 's-in-the-Fields.  His  library  went  to  the  Col- 
lege of  Physicians,  and  his  wealth  to  his  only  daugh- 
ter, who  was  married  to  the  IMarquis  of  Montpouvil- 
lon.  Though  Mayerne  was  the  most  eminent  physi- 
cian of  his  time,  his  prescriptions  show  that  his  en- 
lightenment was  not  superior  to  the  prevailing  ig- 
norance of  the  period.  He  recommended  a  monthly 
excess  of  wine  and  food  as  a  fine  stimulant  to  the  sys- 
tem. His  treatise  on  Gout,  written  in  French,  and 
translated  into  English  (1676)  by  Charles  II. 's  phy- 
sician in  ordinary.  Dr.  Thomas  Sherley,  recommends 
a  clumsy  and  inordinate  administration  of  violent 
drugs.  Calomel  he  habitually  administered  in  scru- 
ple doses.  Sugar  of  lead  he  mixed  largely  in  his  con- 
serves; pulverized  human  bones  he  was  very  fond  of 
prescribing;  and  the  principal  ingredient  in  his  gout- 
powder  was  "raspings  of  a  human  skull  unburied." 
But  his  sweetest  compound  was  his  "Balsam  of 
Bats,"  strongly  recommended  as  an  unguent  for  hy- 
pochondriacal persons,  into  which  entered  adders, 
bats,  suckling  whelps,  earth-worms,  hog's  grease,  the 
marrow  of  a  stag,  and  the  thigh-bone  of  an  ox.   After 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  23 

such  a  specimen  of  the  doctor's  skill,  possibly  the 
reader  will  not  care  to  study  his  receipts  for  canine 
madness,  communicated  to  the  Royal  Society  in  1687, 
or  his  "Excellent  and  well-approved  Receipts  and 
Experiments  in  Cookery,  with  the  best  way  of  Pre- 
serving." Nor  will  the  reader  be  surprised  to  learn 
that  the  great  physician  had  a  firm  belief  in  the  efS- 
cacy  of  amulets  and  charms. 

But  the  ignorance  and  superstition  of  which  May- 
erne  was  the  representative  were  approaching  the 
close  of  their  career;  and  Sir  Theodore's  court  celeb- 
rity and  splendour  were  to  become  contemptible  by 
the  side  of  the  scientific  achievements  of  a  contem- 
porary. The  grave  closed  over  Mayerne  in  1655 ;  but 
in  the  December  of  1652,  the  College  of  Physicians 
had  erected  in  their  hall  a  statue  of  Harvey,  who  died 
on  the  third  of  June,  1657,  aged  seventy-nine  years. 

"The  circling  streams,  once  thought  but  pools  of  blood 
(Whether  life's  fuel,  or  the  body's  food), 
From  dark  oblivion  Harvey's  name  shall  save." 

Aubrey  says  of  Harvey — "He  was  not  tall,  but  of 
the  lowest  stature;  round-faced,  olivaster  (like  waint- 
scott)  complexion:  little  eie— round,  very  black,  full 
of  spirit;  his  haire  was  black  as  a  raven,  but  quite 
white  twenty  years  before  he  dyed.  I  remember  he 
was  wont  to  drink  coffee,  which  he  and  his  brother 
Eliab  did,  before  coffee-hou.ses  were  in  fashion  in 
London.  He  was,  as  all  the  rest  of  his  brothers,  very 
cholerique;  and  in  his  younger  days  wore  a  dagger 
(as  the  fashion  then  was) ;  but  this  doctor  would  be 
apt  to  draw  out  his  dagger  upon  every  slight  occa- 
sion. He  rode  on  horse-back  with  a  foot-cloath  to  visit 


24  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

his  patients,  his  man  following  on  foot,  as  the  fashion 
then  was,  was  very  decent,  now  quite  discontinued." 

Harvey's  discovery  dates  a  new  era  in  medical  and 
surgical  science.  Its  influence  on  scientific  men,  not 
only  as  a  stepping-stone  to  further  discoveries,  but 
as  a  power  rousing  in  all  quarters  a  spirit  of  philo- 
sophic investigation,  was  immediately  perceptible.  A 
new  class  of  students  arose,  before  whom  the  foolish 
dreams  of  medical  superstition  and  the  darkness  of 
empiricism  slowly  disappeared. 

Of  the  physicians*  of  what  may  be  termed  the 
Elizabethan  era,  beyond  all  others  the  most  sagacious 
and  interesting,  is  William  Bulleyn.  He  belongs  to 
a  bevy  of  distinguished  Eastern  Counties'  physicians. 
Dr.  Butts,  Henry  VIII. 's  physician,  mentioned  in 
StrjTse's  "Life  of  Cranmer,"  and  made  celebrated 
amongst  doctors  by  Shakespeare's  "Henry  the 
Eighth,"  belonged  to  an  honourable  and  gentle  fam- 
ily sprinkled  over  Norfolk,  Suffolk,  and  Cambridge- 
shire. The  butcher  king  knighted  him  by  the  style  of 
William  Butts  of  Norfolk.  Caius  was  born  at  Nor- 
wich; and  the  eccentric  William  Butler,  of  whom 
Mayerne,  Aubrey,  and  Fuller  tell  fantastic  stories, 
was  born  at  Ipswich,  about  the  year  15-35. 

William  Bulleyn  was  born  in  the  isle  of  Ely;  but 
it  is  with  the  eastern  division  of  the  county  of  Suf- 
folk that  his  name  is  especially  associated.  Sir  Wil- 
liam Bulleyn,  the  Sheriff  of  Norfolk  and  Suffolk  in 

*  To  the  acquirements  of  the  Elizabethan  physicians  in 
everj'  department  of  learning,  save  the  sciences  immediately 
concerning  their  own  profession,  Lord  Bacon  bears  emphatic 
testimony — "For  you  shall  have  of  them  antiquaries,  poets, 
humanists,  statesmen,   merchants,  divines." 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  25 

the  fifteenth  year  of  Henry  VII.,  and  grandfathei 
of  the  unfortunate  Anne  Boleyn,  was  one  of  the  mag- 
nates of  the  doctor's  family— members  of  which  are 
still  to  be  found  in  Ipswich  and  other  parts  of  East 
Anglia,  occupying  positions  of  high  respectability. 
In  the  reigns  of  Edward  VI.,  ilary,  and  Elizabeth,  no 
one  ranked  higher  than  William  Bulleyn  as  botanist 
and  physician.  The  record  of  his  acuteness  and 
learning  is  found  in  his  numerous  works,  which  are 
amongst  the  most  interesting  prose  writings  of  the 
Elizabethan  era.  If  Mr.  Bohn,  who  has  alreadj^  done 
so  much  to  render  old  and  neglected  authors  popular, 
would  present  the  public  with  a  well-edited  reprint 
of  Bulleyn 's  w-orks,he  would  make  a  valuable  addition 
to  the  services  he  has  already  conferred  on  literature. 
After  receiving  a  preliminary  education  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Cambridge,  Bulleyn  enlarged  his  mind  by 
extended  travel,  spending  much  time  in  Germany  and 
Scotland.  During  the  reign  of  Queen  Mary  he  prac- 
ticed in  Norwich;  but  he  moved  to  Blaxhall,  in  Suf- 
folk (of  which  parish  it  is  beUeved  his  brother  was 
for  some  years  rector).  Alluding  to  his  wealthy 
friend,  Sir  Thomas  Kushe,  of  Oxford,  he  says,  with 
a  pun,  "I  myself  did  know  a  Rushe,  growing  in  the 
fenne  side,  by  Orford,  in  Suffolke,  that  might  have 
spent  three  hundred  marks  by  year.  Was  not  this  a 
rush  of  estimation?  A  fewe  sutche  rushes  be  better 
than  many  great  trees  or  bushes.  But  thou  doste  not 
know  that  countrey,  where  sometyme  I  did  dwell,  at 
a  place  called  Blaxall,  neere  to  that  Rushe  Bushe.  I 
would  all  rushea  within  this  realme  were  as  riche  in 
value."    (The  ancient  family  still  maintain  their  con- 


26  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

nection  with  the  county.)  Speaking  of  the  rushes 
near  Orford,  in  Suffolk,  and  about  the  isle  of  Ely, 
Bulleyn  says,  "The  playne  people  make  mattes  and 
horse-collars  of  the  greater  rushes,  and  of  the  smaller 
they  make  lightes  or  candles  for  the  winter.  Rushes 
that  growe  upon  dry  groundes  be  good  to  strewe  in 
halles,  chambers,  and  galleries,  to  walk  upon— de- 
fending apparell,  as  traynes  of  gownes  and  kirtles, 
from  the  drst." 

He  tells  of  the  virtues  of  Suffolk  sage  (a  herb  that 
the  nurses  of  that  county  still  believe  in  as  having 
miraculous  effects,  when  administered  in  the  form  of 
"sage-tea").  Of  Suffolk  hops  (now  but  little  grown 
in  the  county)  he  mentions  in  terms  of  high  praise — 
especially  of  those  grown  round  Framlingham  Castle, 
and  "the  late  house  of  nunnes  at  Briziarde."  "I 
know  in  many  places  of  the  country  of  Suft'olke, 
where  they  brew  theyr  beere  with  hoppes  that  growe 
upon  theyr  owne  groundes,  as  in  a  place  called  Bri- 
ziarde, near  an  old  famous  castle  called  Framingham, 
and  in  many  other  places  of  the  country."  Of  the 
peas  of  Orford  the  following  mention  is  made: — "In 
a  place  called  Orforde,  in  Suffolke,  betwene  the  ha- 
ven and  the  mayne  sea,  wheras  never  plow  came,  nor 
natural  earth  was,  but  stones  onely,  infinite  thousand 
ships  loden  in  that  place,  there  did  pease  grow,  whose 
roots  were  more  than  iii  fadome  long,  and  the  coddes 
did  grow  uppon  clusters  like  the  keys  of  ashe  trees, 
bigger  than  fitches,  and  less  than  the  fyeld  peason, 
very  sweete  to  eat  upon,  and  served  many  pore  people 
dwelling  there  at  hand,  which  els  should  have  per- 
ished for  honger,  the  scarcity  of  bread  was  so  great. 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  27 

In  so  much  that  the  playne  pore  people  did  make  very 
much  of  akornes ;  and  a  sickness  of  a  strong  fever  did 
sore  molest  the  commons  that  yere,  the  like  whereof 
was  never  heard  of  there.  Now,  ^^'hether  th'  occasion 
of  these  peason,  in  providence  of  God,  came  through 
some  shipwracke  with  much  misery,  or  els  hy  miracle, 
I  am  not  able  to  determine  thereof;  but  sowen  by 
man's  hand  they  were  not,  nor  like  other  pease."* 

In  the  same  way  one  has  in  the  Doctor's  "Book  of 
Simples"  pleasant  gossip  about  the  more  choice 
productions  of  the  garden  and  of  commerce,  showing 
that  horticulture  must  have  been  far  more  advanced 
at  that  time  than  is  generally  supposed,  and  that  the 
luxuries  imported  from  foreign  countries  were  largely 
consumed  throughout  the  country.  Pears,  apples, 
peaches,  quinces,  cherries,  grapes,  raisins,  prunes, 
barberries,  oranges,  medlars,  raspberries  and  straw- 
berries, spinage,  ginger,  and  lettuces  are  the  good 
things  thrown  upon  the  board. 

Of  pears,  the  author  says:  "There  is  a  kynd  of 
peares  growing  in  the  city  of  Norwich,  called  the 
black  freere's  peare,  very  delicious  and  pleasaunt, 
and  no  lesse  profitable  unto  a  hoate  stomacke,  as  I 
heard  it  reported  by  a  ryght  worshipful  phisicion  of 
the  same  city,  called  Doctour  Manfield."  Other  pears, 
too,  are  mentioned,  "sutch  as  have  names  as  peare 
Robert,  peare  John,  bishop's  blessyngs,  with  other 
prety  names.     The  red  warden  is  of  greate  vertue, 


*  The  tradition  of  this  timely  and  unaccountable  growth  of 
peas  still  exists  amongst  the  peasants  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Orford.    J.  C.  J. 


28  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

conserved,  roasted  or  baken  to  quench  cboller."  The 
varieties  of  the  apple  especially  mentioned  are  "the 
costardes,  the  greene  cotes,  the  pippen,  the  queene 
aple." 

Grapes  are  spoken  of  as  cultivated  and  brought  to 
a  high  state  of  perfection  in  Suffolk  and  other  part^ 
of  the  country.  Ilemp  is  humorously  called  "gallow 
grasse  or  neckweede. ' '  The  heartesease,  or  paunsie,  is 
mentioned  by  its  quaint  old  name,  "three  faces  in  one 
hodde. "  Parsnips,  radishes,  and  carrots  are  offered 
for  sale.  In  the  neighborhood  of  London,  large 
quantities  of  these  vegetables  were  grown  for  the 
London  market;  but  Bullej'n  thinks  little  of  them, 
describing  them  as  "more  plentiful  than  profytable." 
Of  figs— "Figges  be  good  agaynst  melancholy,  and 
the  falling  evil,  to  be  eaten.  Figges,  nuts,  and  herb 
grace  do  make  a  sufficient  medicine  against  poison  or 
the  pestilence.  Figges  make  a  good  gargarism  to 
cleanse  the  throates." 

The  double  daisy  is  mentioned  as  growing  in 
gardens.  Daisy  tea  was  employed  in  gout  and  rheu- 
matism—as herb  tea  of  various  sorts  still  is  by  the 
poor  of  our  provinces.  With  daisy  tea  (or  bellis-tea) 
"I,  Bulleyn,  did  recover  one  Belliser,  not  onely  from 
a  spice  of  the  palsie,  but  also  from  the  quartan.  And 
afterwards,  the  same  Belliser,  more  unnatural  than  a 
viper,  sought  divers  ways  to  have  murthered  me,  tak- 
ing part  against  me  with  my  mortal  enemies,  accom- 
panied with  bloudy  ruffins  for  that  bloudy  purpose." 
Parsley,  also,  was  much  used  in  medicine.  And  as  it 
was  the  custom  for  the  doctor  to  grow  his  own  herbs 
in  his  garden,  we  may  here  see  the  origin  of  the  old 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  29 

nursery  tradition  of  little  babies  being  brought  by 
the  doctor  from  the  parsley  bed.* 

Scarcely  less  interesting  than  "The  Book  of  Sim- 
ples" is  Bulleyn's  "Dialogue  betweene  Soarenes  and 
Chirurgi."  It  opens  with  an  honourable  mention  of 
many  distinguished  physicians  and  ehirurgians.  Dr. 
John  Kaius  is  praised  as  a  worthy  follower  of  Lin- 
acre.  Dr.  Turner's  "booke  of  herbes  will  always 
grow  greene."  Sir  Thomas  Eliot's  "  'castel  of 
health'  cannot  decay."  Thomas  Faire  "is  not  deade, 
but  is  transformed  and  chaunged  into  a  new  nature 
immortal."  Androwe  Borde,  the  father  of  "Merry 
Andrews,"  "wrote  also  wel  of  physicke  to  profit  the 
common  wealth  withal."  Thomas  Pannel,  the  trans- 
lator of  the  Schola  Saternitana,  "hath  play'd  ye 
good  servant  to  the  commonwealth  in  translating 
good  bookes  of  physicke."  Dr.  "William  Kunyngham 
"hath  wel  travailed  like  a  good  souldiour  agaynst  the 
ignorant  enemy."  Numerous  other  less  eminent 
practitioners  are  mentioned— such  as  Buns,  Edwards, 
Hatcher,  Frere,  Langton,  Lorkin,  Wendy — educated 
at  Cambridge;  Gee  and  Simon  Ludford,  of  Oxford; 
Huyck  (the  Queen's  physician),  Bartley,  Carr;  Mas- 
ters, John  Porter,  of  Norwich;  Edmunds  of  York, 
Robert  Baltrop,  and  Thomas  Calfe,  apothecary. 

"Soft    ehirurgians,"    says    Bulleyn,    "make    foul 

sores."    He  was  a  bold  and  courageous  one.   "Where 

the  wound  is,"  runs  the  Philippine  proverb,   "the 

plaster  must  be."    Bulleyn  was  of  the  same  opinion; 

but,  in  dressing  a  tender  part,  the  surgeon  is  directed 

to   have   "a   gladsome   countenance,"   because   "the 

*  The  classical  reader  who  is  acquainted  with  the  signifi- 
cations of  the  Greek  XeXmov,  will  not  be  at  a  loss  to  ac- 
count for  this  medicinal  use  of  the  crisp  green  leaves. 


30  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

paciente  should  not  be  greatly  troubled."     For  bad 
surgeons  he  has  not  less  hostility  than  he  has  for 
"Petty  Foggers,  in  cases  of  the  law, 
Who  make  mountayncs  of  molhils,  and  trees  of  a  straw." 

The  stale  of  medicine  in  p]lizabeth's  reign  may  be 
discovered  by  a  survey  of  the  best  recipes  of  this 
physician,  who,  in  sayracity  and  learning,  was  far 
superior  to  Sir  Theodore  Mayerne,  his  successor  by  a 
long  interval. 

"An  Embrocation.— An  embrocation  is  made  after 
this  manner : — IJ.  Of  a  decoction  of  mallowes,  vyolets, 
barly,  quince  seed,  lettice  leaves,  one  pint;  of  barly 
meale,  two  ounces ;  of  oyle  of  vyolets  and  roses,  of 
each,  an  ounce  and  half;  of  butter,  one  ounce;  and 
then  seeth  them  all  together  till  they  be  like  a  broathe, 
puttyng  thereto,  at  the  ende,  four  yolkes  of  eggs; 
and  the  maner  of  applying  them  is  with  peeces  of 
cloth,  dipped  in  the  aforesaid  decoction,  being 
actually  hoate." 

"A  Good  Emplastcr.— You  shall  mak  a  plaster  with 
these  medicines  following,  which  the  great  learned 
men  themselves  have  used  unto  their  paeienfes: — 1>. 
Of  hulled  beanes,  or  beane  flower  that  is  without  the 
brane,  one  pound;  of  mallow-leaves,  two  handfuls; 
seethe  them  in  lye,  til  they  be  well  sodden,  and  after- 
warde  let  them  be  stamped  and  incorporate  with  four 
ounces  of  meale  of  lint  or  flaxe,  two  ounces  of  meale 
of  lupina;  and  forme  thereof  a  plaster  ^vith  goat's 
grease,  for  this  openeth  the  pores,  avoideth  the  mat- 
ter, and  comforteth  also  the  member;  but  if  the  place, 
after  a  daye  or  two  of  the  application,  fall  more  and 
more  to  blackness,  it  shall  be  necessary  to  go  further, 
even  to  sacrifying  and  incision  of  the  place." 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  31 

Pearl  electuaries  and  pearl  mixtures  were  very 
fashionable  medicines  with  the  wealthy  down  to  the 
commencement  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Here  we 
have  Bulleyn's  recipe  for 

" Electuarium  de  Gemmis.—Teike  two  drachms  of 
white  perles;  two  little  peeces  of  saphyre;  jacinth, 
corneline,  emerauldes,  granettes,  of  each  an  ounce; 
setwal,  the  sweate  roote  doronike,  the  rind  of  pome- 
citron,  mace,  basel  seede,  of  each  two  drachms;  of 
redde  corall,  amber,  shaving  of  ivory,  of  each  two 
drachms ;  rootes  both  of  white  and  red  behen,  ginger, 
long  peper,  spicknard,  folium  indicum,  saffron, 
cardamon,  of  each  one  drachm;  of  troch,  diarodon, 
lignum  aloes,  of  each  half  a  small  handful ;  cinnamon, 
galinga,  zurubeth,  which  is  a  kind  of  setwal,  of  each 
one  draohm  and  a  half ;  thin  pieces  of  gold  and  sylver, 
of  each  half  a  scruple ;  of  musk,  half  a  drachm.  Make 
your  electuary  with  honey  emblici,  which  is  the  fourth 
kind  of  mirobalans  with  roses,  strained  in  equall 
partes,  as  much  as  will  suffice.  This  healeth  cold  dis- 
eases of  ye  braine,  harte,  stomack.  It  is  a  medicine 
proved  against  the  tremblynge  of  the  harte,  faynting 
and  souning,  the  weaknes  of  the  stomacke,  pensivenes, 
solitarines.  Kings  and  noble  men  have  used  this  for 
their  comfort.  It  causeth  them  to  be  bold-spirited, 
the  body  to  smell  wel,  and  ingendreth  to  the  face  good 
coloure. ' ' 

Truly  a  medicine  for  kings  and  noblemen !    During 

the  railway  panic  in  '46  an  unfortunate  physician 

prescribed  for  a  nervous  lady: — 

B.  Great  Western,  350  shares. 
Eastern  Counties  \  ,  ,  _„„ 
North  Middlesex  r~^  *°S°- 
Mft.  Haust.  I.    Om.  noc.  cap. 


32  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

This  direction  to  a  delicate  gentlewoman,  to  swal- 
low nightly  two  thousand  four  hundred  and  fifty  rail- 
way shares,  was  regarded  as  evidence  of  the  physi- 
cian's insanity,  and  the  management  of  his  private 
affaii-s  was  forthwith  taken  out  of  liis  hands.  But 
assuredly  it  was  as  rational  a  prescription  as  Bull- 
eyn's  "Electuarium  de  Gemmis." 

"A  Precious  Water.— lake  nutmegges,  the  roote 
called  doronike,  which  the  apothecaries  have,  setwall, 
gatangall,  mastike,  long  peper,  the  bark  of  pomecit- 
ron,  of  mellon,  sage,  bazel,  marjorum,  dill,  spiknard, 
wood  of  aloes,  cubebe,  cardamon,  called  graynes  of 
paradise,  lavender,  peniroyall,  mintes,  sweet  catamus, 
germander,  enulacampana,  rosemary,  stichados,  and 
quinance,  of  eche  lyke  quantity;  saffron,  an  ounce 
and  half;  the  bone  of  a  harte's  heart  grated,  cut,  and 
stamped ;  and  beate  your  spyces  grossly  in  a  morter. 
Put  in  ambergrice  and  musk,  of  each  half  a  drachm. 
Distil  this  in  a  simple  aqua  vita?,  made  with  strong 
ale,  or  sackeleyes  and  aniseedes,  not  in  a  common 
styll,  but  in  a  serpentine;  to  tell  the  vertue  of  this 
water  against  eolde,  phlegme,  dropsy,  heavines  of 
minde,  comming  of  melancholy,  I  cannot  well  at  thys 
present,  the  excellent  virtues  thereof  are  sutch,  and 
also  the  tyme  were  to  long." 

The  cure  of  cancers  has  been  pretended  and  at- 
tempted by  a  numerous  train  of  knaves  and  simple- 
tons, as  well  as  men  of  science.  In  the  Elizabethan 
time  this  most  terrible  of  maladies  was  thought  to  be 
influenced  by  certain  precious  waters— i.  e.  precious 
messes. 

"Many  good  men  and  women,"  says  BuUeyn, 
"wythin  thys  realme  have  dyvers  and  sundry  medi- 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  33 

cines  for  the  canker,  and  do  help  their  neighboures 
that  bee  in  perill  and  daunger  whyche  he  not  onely 
poore  and  needy,  having  no  money  to  spende  in  chir- 
urgie.  But  some  do  well  where  no  chirurgians  be 
neere  at  hand;  in  such  cases,  as  I  have  said,  many 
good  gentlemen  and  ladyes  have  done  no  small  pleas- 
ure to  poore  people;  as  that  excellent  knyght,  and 
worthy  learned  man,  Syr  Thomas  Eliot,  whose  works 
be  immortall.  Syr  William  Parris,  of  Cambridge- 
shire, whose  cures  deserve  prayse;  Syr  William  Gas- 
coigne,  of  Yorkshire,  that  helped  many  soare  eyen; 
and  the  Lady  Tailor,  of  Huntingdonshire,  and  the 
Lady  Darrell  of  Kent,  had  many  precious  medicines 
to  comfort  the  sight,  and  to  heale  woundes  withal, 
and  were  well  seene  in  herbes. 

"The  commonwealth  hath  great  want  of  them,  and 
of  theyr  medicines,  whyeh  if  they  had  come  into  my 
handes,  they  should  have  bin  written  in  my  booke. 
Among  al  other  there  was  a  knight,  a  man  of  great 
worshyp,  a  Godly  hurtlesse  gentleman,  which  is  de- 
parted thys  lyfe,  hys  name  is  Syr  Anthony  Heven- 
ingham.  This  gentleman  learned  a  water  to  kyll  a 
canker  of  hys  owne  mother,  whych  he  used  all  hys 
lyfe,  to  the  greate  helpe  of  many  men,  women,  and 
chyldren. ' ' 

This  water  "learned  by  Syr  Anthony  Hevening- 
ham"  was,  Bulleyn  states  on  report,  composed 
thus:— 

"Precious  Water  to  Cure  a  Canker-.— Take  dove's 
foote,  a  herbe  so  named,  Arkangell  ivy  wyth  the  ber- 
ries, young  red  bryer  toppes,  and  leaves,  whyte  roses, 
theyr  leaves  and  buds,  red  sage,  selandyne,  and  wood- 
bynde,  of  eohe  lyke  quantity,  cut  or  chopped  and  put 


34  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

into  pure  cleane  whyte  wyne,  and  clarified  hony. 
Then  breake  into  it  alum  glasse  and  put  in  a  little 
of  the  pouder  of  aloes  hepatica.  Destill  these  togeth- 
er softly  in  a  limbecke  of  glasse  or  pure  tin;  if  not, 
then  in  limbecke  wherein  aqua  vita  is  made.  Keep 
this  water  close.  It  will  not  onely  Ivyll  the  canker, 
if  it  be  duly  washed  therewyth ;  but  also  two  droppea 
dayly  put  into  the  eye  wyll  sharp  the  syght,  and 
breake  the  pearle  and  spottes,  specially  if  it  be 
dropped  in  with  a  little  fenell  water,  and  close  the 
eys  after." 

There  is  reason  to  wish  that  all  empirical  applica- 
tions, for  the  cure  of  cancer,  were  as  harmless  as  this. 

The  following  prescription  for  pomatum  differs  but 
little  from  the  common  domestic  receipts  for  lip-salve 
in  use  at  the  present  day:  — 

"Sickness. — How  make  you  pomatum? 

"Health.— Take  the  fat  of  a  young  kyd  one  pound, 
temper  it  with  the  water  of  musk  roses  by  the  space 
of  foure  dayes;  then  take  five  apples,  and  dresse  them, 
and  cut  them  in  pieces,  and  lard  them  with  cloves, 
then  boyle  them  altogeather  in  the  same  water  of 
roses,  in  one  vessel  of  glasse ;  set  within  another  ves- 
sel ;  let  it  boyle  on  the  fyre  so  long  until  all  be  white ; 
then  wash  them  ^\•ith  ye  same  water  of  muske  roses; 
this  done,  kepe  it  in  a  glass;  and  if  you  wil  have  it 
to  smel  better,  then  you  must  put  in  a  little  civet  or 
musk,  or  of  them  both,  and  ambergrice.  Gentilwomen 
doe  use  this  to  make  theyr  faces  smoth  and  fayre,  for 
it  healeth  cliftes  in  the  lyppes,  or  in  any  other  place 
of  the  hands  and  face." 

The  most  laughable  of  all  Bulleyn's  receipts  is  one 
in  which,  for  the  cure  of  a  child  suffering  under  a 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  35 

certain  nervous  malady,  he  prescribes  "a  smal  yong 
mouse  rosted."  To  some  a  "rested  mouse"  may 
seem  more  palatable  than  the  compound  in  which 
snails  are  the  principal  ingredient.  "Snayles,"  says 
BuUejTi,  "broken  from  the  shell es  and  sodden  in 
whyte  wyne  with  oyle  and  sugar  are  very  holsome, 
because  they  be  hoat  and  moist  for  the  straightnes  of 
the  lungs  and  cold  cough.  Snails  stamped  with  cam- 
phory,  and  leven  wil  draw  forth  prycks  in  the  flesh." 
So  long  did  this  belief  in  the  virtue  of  snails  retain 
its  hold  on  Suffolk,  that  the  writer  of  these  pages  re- 
members a  venerable  lady  (whose  memory  is  cher- 
ished for  her  unostentatious  benevolence  and  rare 
w'orth)  who  for  years  daily  took  a  cup  of  snail  broth, 
for  the  benefit  of  a  weak  chest. 

One  minor  feature  of  BuUeyn's  works  is  the  num- 
ber of  receipts  given  in  them  for  curing  the  bites  of 
mad  dogs.  The  good  man's  horror  of  Suffolk  witches 
is  equal  to  his  admiration  of  Suffolk  dairies.  Of  the 
former  he  says,  "I  dyd  know  wji;hin  these  few  yeres 
a  false  witch,  called  I\I.  Line,  in  a  towne  of  Suft'olke 
called  Derham,  which  with  a  payre  of  ebene  beades, 
and  certain  charmes,  had  no  small  resort  of  foolysh 
women,  when  theyr  chyldren  were  syck.  To  thys 
lame  wyteh  they  resorted,  to  have  the  fairie  charmed 
cind  the  spyrite  conjured  away;  through  the  prayers 
of  the  ebene  beades,  whych  she  said  came  from  the 
Holy  Land,  and  were  sanctifyed  at  Rome.  Through 
whom  many  goodly  cures  were  don,  but  my  chaimce 
was  to  burn  ye  said  beades.  Oh  that  damnable* 
witches  be  suffred  to  live  unpiinished  and  so  many 
blessed  men  burned;  witches  be  more  hurtful  in  this 
realm  than  either  quarten  or  pestilence.     I  know  in 


36  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

a  towne  called  Kelshall  in  Suffolke,  a  mtch,  whose 
name  was  M.  Didge,  who  with  certain  Ave  Marias 
upon  her  ebene  beades,  and  a  waxe  candle,  used  this 
charme  for  S.  Anthonies  fyre,  having  the  sycke  body 
before  her,  holding  up  her  hande,  saying— 

'There  came  two  aiigcb  out  of  the  North-east, 
One  brought   fyre,   the  other  brought   frost, — 
Out  fyre,  and  in  frost  I' 

I  could  reherse  an  hundred  of  sutch  knackes,  of  these 
holy  gossips.  The  fyre  take  them  all,  for  they  be 
God's  enemyes." 

On  leaving  Blaxhall  in  Suffolk,  Bulleyn  migrated 
to  the  north.  For  many  years  he  practised  with  suc- 
cess at  Durham.  At  Sliields  he  owTied  a  considerable 
property.  Sir  Thomas,  Baron  of  Hilton,  Commander 
of  Tinmouth  Castle  under  Philip  and  Mary,  was  his 
patron  and  intimate  friend.  His  first  book,  entitled 
"Government  of  Health,"  he  dedicated  to  Sir  Thomas 
Hilton ;  but  the  MS.,  unfortunately,  was  lost  in  a  ship- 
wreck before  it  was  printed.  Disheartened  by  this 
loss,  and  the  death  of  his  patron,  Bulleyn  bravely  set 
to  work  in  London,  to  "revive  his  dead  book." 
Whilst  engaged  on  the  laborious  work  of  recomposi- 
tion,  he  was  arraigned  on  a  grave  charge  of  murder. 
"One  William  Hilton,"  he  says,  telling  his  own  story, 
"brother  to  the  sayd  Syr  Thomas  Hilton,  accused  me 
of  no  less  cryme  then  of  most  cruel  murder  of  his 
owne  brother,  who  dyed  of  a  fever  (sent  onely  of 
God)  among  his  owne  f rends,  fynishing  his  lyfe  in 
the  Christian  fayth.  But  this  William  Hilton  caused 
me  to  be  arraigned  before  that  noble  Prince,  the 
Duke's  Grace  of  Norfolke,  for  the  same;  to  this  end  to 
have  had  me  dyed  shamefully ;  that  with  the  covetous 


A    BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  37 

Ahab  he  might  have,  through  false  witnes  and  per- 
jury, obtayued  by  the  counsel  of  Jezabell,  a  wine- 
yard,  by  the  pryce  of  blood.  But  it  is  wrytten,  Testis 
niendax  peribit,  a  fals  witnes  shal  com  to  naught; 
his  wicked  practise  was  wisely  espyed,  his  folly  de- 
rj'-ded,  his  bloudy  purpose  letted,  and  fynallye  I  was 
with  justice  delivered." 

This  occurred  in  1560.  His  foiled  enemy  after- 
wards endeavoured  to  get  him  assassinated;  but  he 
again  triumphed  over  the  machinations  of  his  adver- 
sary. Settling  in  London,  he  obtained  a  large  prac- 
tice, though  he  was  never  enrolled  amongst  the  phy- 
sicians of  the  college.  His  leisure  time  he  devoted  to 
the  composition  of  his  excellent  works.  To  the  last 
he  seems  to  have  kept  up  a  close  connection  with  the 
leading  Eastern  Counties  families.  His  "Comforta- 
ble Regiment  and  Very  "VVholsome  order  against  the 
moste  perilous  Pleurisie,"  was  dedicated  to  the  Right 
Worshipful  Sir  Robart  Wingfelde  of  Lethryngham, 
Knight. 

William  Bulleyn  died  in  London,  on  the  7th  of 
January,  1576,  and  was  buried  in  the  church  of  St. 
Giles's,  Cripplegate,  in  the  same  tomb  wherein  his 
brother  Richard  had  been  laid  thirteen  years  before; 
and  wherein  John  Fox,  the  martyrologist,  was  in- 
terred eleven  years  later. 


434346 


CHAPTER  III. 

SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE   AND   SIR  KENELM   DIGBY. 

Amongrst  the  physicians  of  the  seventeenth  century- 
were  three  Brownes— father,  son,  and  grandson.  The 
father  wrote  the  "Religio  Medici,"  and  the  "Pseu- 
doxia  Epidemica"— a  treatise  on  viilgar  eiTors.  The 
son  was  the  traveller,  and  author  of  ' '  Travels  in  Hun- 
garia,  Servia,  Bulgaria,  Macedonia,  Thessaly,  Austria, 
Styi-ia,  Carinthia,  Camiola,  Friuli  &c, "  and  the 
translator  of  the  Life  of  Themistocles  in  the  English" 
version  of  "Plutarch's  Lives"  undertaken  by  Dryden. 
He  was  also  a  phj^ician  of  Bartholomew's,  and  a 
favourite  physician  of  Charles  II.,  who  on  one  occa- 
sion said  of  him,  "Doctor  Browne  is  as  learned  as 
any  of  the  college,  and  as  well  bred  as  any  of  the 
court."  The  grandson  was  a  Fellow  of  the  'Roya\ 
Society,  and,  like  his  father  and  grandfather,  a  Fel- 
low of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians;  but  he  was 
by  no  means  worthy  of  his  distinguished  progenitors. 
Alike  unknown  in  literature,  science,  and  art,  he  was 
a  miserable  sot,  and  was  killed  by  a  fall  from  his 
horse,  between  Southfleet  and  Gravesend,  when  in  a 
state  of  intoxication.    He  was  thus  cut  off  in  the  July 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  39 

of  1710,  having  survived  his  father  not  quite  two 
years. 

The  author  of  the  ' '  Religio  Medici ' '  enjoys  as  good 
a  chance  of  an  immortality  of  fame  as  any  of  his 
contemporaries.  The  child  of  a  London  merchant, 
who  left  him  a  comfortable  fortune,  Thomas  Browne 
was  from  the  beginning  of  his  life  (Oct.  19,  1605)  to 
its  close  (Oct.  19,  1682),  well  placed  amongst  the 
wealthier  of  those  who  occupied  the  middle  way  of 
life.  Prom  Winchester  College,  where  his  schoolboy 
days  were  spent,  he  proceeded  to  the  Univer.sity  of 
Oxford,  becoming  a  member  of  Broadgates  Hall,  i.  e., 
Pembroke  College— the  college  of  Blackstone,  Shen- 
stone,  and  Samuel  Johnson.  After  taking  his  B.A. 
and  M.A.  degrees,  he  turned  his  attention  to  medi- 
cine, and  for  some  time  practised  as  a  physician  in 
Oxfordshire.  Subsequently  to  this  he  travelled  over 
different  parts  of  Europe,  visiting  France,  Italy,  and 
Holland,  and  taking  a  degree  of  Doctor  in  Physic  at 
Leyden.  Returning  to  England,  he  settled  at  Nor- 
wich, married  a  rich  and  beautiful  Norfolk  lady, 
named  Mileham ;  and  for  the  rest  of  his  days  resided 
in  that  ancient  city,  industriously  occupied  with  an 
extensive  practice,  the  pursuits  of  literature,  and  the 
education  of  his  children.  When  Charles  II.  visited 
Norwich  in  1671,  Thomas  BroT\Tie,  M.D.,  was 
knighted  by  the  royal  hand.  This  honour,  little  as  a 
man.  of  letters  would  now  esteem  it,  was  highly  prized 
by  the  philosopher.  He  thus  alludes  to  it  in  his  "  An- 
tiquities of  Norwich"— "And  it  is  not  for  some  won- 
der, that  Norwich  ha'ving  been  for  so  long  a  time  so 
considerable  a  place,  so  few  kings  have  visited  it ;  of 
whichnumber  among  so  many  monarchs  since  theCon- 


40  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

quest  we  find  but  four;  viz.,  King  Henry  III.,  Ed- 
ward I.,  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  our  gracious  sovereign 
now  reigning,  King  Charles  II.,  of  which  I  had  a 
particular  reason  to  take  notice." 

Amongst  the  Norfolk  people  Sir  Thomas  was  very 
popular,  his  suave  and  unobtrusive  mannei-s  securing 
him  many  friends,  and  his  philosophic  moderation  of 
temper  sa\'ing  him  from  ever  making  an  enemy. 
The  honour  conferred  on  him  was  a  subject  of  con- 
gratulation— even  amongst  his  personal  friends, 
when  his  back  was  turned.  The  Rev.  John  White- 
foot,  M.A.,  Rector  of  Ileigham,  in  Norfolk,  in  his 
"Minutes  for  the  Life  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne,"  says, 
that  had  it  been  his  province  to  preach  his  funeral 
sermon,  he  should  have  taken  his  text  from  an  un- 
canonical  book— "I  mean  that  of  Syracides,  or  Jesus, 
the  son  of  Syrach,  commonly  called  Ecclesiasticus, 
which,  in  the  38th  chapter,  and  the  first  verse,  hath 
these  words,  'Honour  a  phj''sician  with  the  honour 
due  unto  him;  for  the  uses  which  you  may  have  of 
him,  for  the  Lord  hath  created  him;  for  of  the  Most 
High  Cometh  healing,  and  he  shall  receive  Honour 
of  the  King'  (as  ours  did  that  of  Imighthood  from 
the  present  King,  when  he  was  in  this  city).  'The 
skill  of  the  physician  shall  lift  up  his  head,  and  in 
the  sight  of  great  men  shall  he  be  in  admiration';  so 
was  this  worthy  person  by  the  greatest  man  of  this 
nation  that  ever  came  into  this  country,  by  whom  also 
he  was  frequently  and  personally  visited." 

Widely  and  accurately  read  in  ancient  and  modern 
literature,  and  possessed  of  numerous  accomplish- 
ments, Sir  Thomas  Browne  was  in  society  diffident 
almost  to  shyness.     "His  modesty,"  says  \Miitefoot, 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  41 

"was  visible  in  a  natural  habitual  blush,  which  was 
increased  upon  the  least  occasion,  and  oft  discovered 
without  any  observable  cause.  Those  who  knew  him 
only  by  the  briskness  of  his  writings  were  astonished 
at  his  gravity  of  aspect  and  countenance,  and  free- 
dom from  loquacity."  As  was  his  manner,  so  was 
his  dress.  ' '  In  his  habit  of  cloathing  he  had  an  aver- 
sion to  all  finery,  and  affected  plainness  both  in  fash- 
ion and  ornaments." 

The  monuments  of  Sir  Thomas  and  his  lady  are  in 
the  church  of  St.  Peter's,  Mancroft,  Norwich,  where 
they  were  buried.  Some  years  since  Sir  Thomas 
Brovsme's  tomb  was  opened  for  the  purpose  of  sub- 
mitting it  to  repair,  when  there  was  discovered  on 
his  cofKn  a  plate,  of  which  Dr.  Diamond,  who  hap- 
pened at  the  time  to  be  in  Norwich,  took  two  rub- 
bings, one  of  which  is  at  present  in  the  writer's  cus- 
tody. It  bears  the  following  interesting  inscrip- 
tion:— "Amplissimus  vir  Dr.  Thomas  Browne  Miles 
Medicinae  Dr.  Annos  Natus  et  Denatus  19  Die  Men- 
sis  Anno  Dmi.,  1682— hoc  loculo  indormiens  coi-poris 
spagyriei  pulvere  plumbum  in  aurum  convertit. " 

The  "Religio  Medici"  not  only  created  an  unpre- 
cedented sensation  by  its  erudition  and  polished 
style,  but  it  shocked  the  nervous  guardians  of  ortho- 
doxy by  its  boldness  of  inquiry.  It  was  assailed  for 
its  infidelity  and  scientific  heresies.  According  to 
Coleridge's  view  of  the  "Religio  Medici,"  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  "a  fine  mixture  of  humourist,  genius,  and 
pedant,"  was  a  Spinosist  without  knowing  it.  "Had 
he,"  says  the  poet,  "lived  nowadays,  he  would  prob- 
ably have  been  a  very  ingenious  and  bold  infidel  in 
his  real  opinions,  though  the  kindness  of  his  nature 


42  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

would  have  kept  him  aloof  from  vulgar,  prating,  ob-* 
trusive  infidelity." 

Amongst  the  advei-se  critics  of  the  "Religio  Me- 
dici" was  the  eccentric,  gallant,  brave,  credulous,  per- 
severing, frivolous.  Sir  Kenelm  Digby.  A  Ma'cenas, 
a  Sir  Philip  Sydney,  a  Dr.  Dee,  a  Beau  Fielding,  and 
a  Dr.  Kitchener,  all  in  one,  this  man  is  chief  of  those 
extravagant  characters  that  astonish  the  world  at 
rare  intervals,  and  are  found  nowhere  except  in  ac- 
tual life.  No  novelist  of  the  most  advanced  section 
of  the  idealistic  school  would  dare  to  create  such  a 
personage  as  Sir  Kenelm.  The  eldest  son  of  the  ill- 
fated  Sir  Everard  Digby,  he  was  scarcely  three  years 
old  when  his  father  atoned  on  the  scaffold  for  his 
share  in  the  gunpowder  treason.  Fortunately  a  por- 
tion of  the  family  e.state  was  entailed,  so  Sir  Kenelm, 
although  the  offspring  of  attainted  blood,  succeeded 
to  an  ample  revenue  of  about  £3000  a-year.  In  1618 
(when  only  in  his  fifteenth  year)  he  entered  Glouces- 
ter Hall,  now  ^\'orcester  College,  Oxford.  In  1621 
'he  commenced  foreign  travel.  He  attended  Charles 
I.  (then  Prince  of  Wales)  at  the  Court  of  Madrid; 
and  returning  to  England  in  1623,  was  knighted  by 
James  I.  at  Hinchinbroke,  the  house  of  Lord  Mon- 
tague, on  the  23rd  of  October  in  that  year.  From 
that  period  he  was  before  the  world  as  courtier,  cook, 
lover,  warrior,  alchemist,  political  intriguer,  and  man 
of  letters.  He  became  a  gentleman  of  the  bedcham- 
ber, and  commissioner  of  the  navy.  In  1628  he  ob- 
tained a  naval  command,  and  made  his  brilliant  ex- 
pedition against  the  Venetians  and  Algerians,  whose 
galleys  he  routed  off  Scanderon.  This  achievement 
is  celebrated  by  his  client  and  friend,  Ben  Jonson:— 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  43 

"Though,  happy  Muse,  tnou  know  my  Digby  well. 
Yet  read  in  him  these  Hnes :  he  doth  excel 
In  honour,  courtesy,  and  all  the  parts 
Court  can  call  hero,  or  man  could  call  his  arts. 
He's  prudent,  valiant,  just,   and  temperate; 
In  him  all  virtue  is  beheld  in   state; 
And  he  is  built  like  some  imperial  room 
For  that  to  dwell  in,  and  be  still  at  home. 
His  breast  is  a  brave  palace,  a  broad  street, 
Where  all  heroic,  ample  thoughts   do   meet ; 
Where  nature  such  a  large  survey  hath  ta'en. 
As  other  souls,  to  his,  dwelt  in  a  lane: 
Witness  his   action   done  at   Scanderoon 
Upon  his  birthday,  the   eleventh  of  June." 

Returning  from  war,  he  became  once  more  the  stu- 
dent, presenting  in  1632  the  library  he  had  purchased 
of  his  friend  Allen,  to  the  Bodleian  Library,  and  de- 
voting his  powers  to  the  mastery  of  controversial 
divinity.  Having  in  1636  entered  the  Church  of 
Rome,  he  resided  for  some  time  abroad.  Amongst 
his  works  at  this  period  were  his  "Conference  with  a 
Lady  about  the  Choice  of  Religion,"  published  in 
1638.  and  his  "Letters  between  Lord  George  Digby 
and  Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  Knt.,  concerning  Religion," 
not  published  till  1651.  It  is  difficult  to  say  to  which 
he  was  most  devoted— his  King,  his  Church,  literature, 
or  his  beautiful  and  frail  wife,  Venetia  Stanley, 
whose  charms  fascinated  the  many  admirers  on  whom 
she  distributed  her  favours,  and  gained  her  Sir 
Kenelm  for  a  husband  when  she  was  the  discarded 
mistress  of  Richard,  Earl  of  Dorset.  She  had  borne 
the  Earl  children,  so  his  Lordship  on  parting  settled 
on  her  an  annuity  of  £500  per  annum.  After  her 
marriage,  this  annuity  not  being  punctually  paid, 
Sir  Kenelm  sued  the  Earl  for  it.  Well  might  Mr. 
Lodge  say,  "By  the  frailties  of  that  lady  much  of  the 
noblest  blood  of  England  was  dishonoured,  for  she 


44  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

was  the  daughter  of  Sir  Edward  Stanley,  Knight  of 
the  Bath,  grandson  of  the  great  Edward,  Earl  of 
Derby,  by  Lucy,  daughter  and  co-heir  of  Thomas 
Percy,  Earl  of  Northumberland."  Such  was  her 
unfair  fame.  "The  fair  fame  left  to  Posterity  of 
that  Truly  Noble  Lady,  the  Lady  Venetia  Digby,  late 
wife  of  Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  Knight,  a  Gentleman  Ab- 
solute in  all  Numbers,"  is  embalmed  in  the  clear 
verses  of  Jonson.  Like  Helen,  she  is  preserved  to  us 
by  the  sacred  poet. 

"Draw   first  a   cloud,   all   save  her  neck. 
And  out  of  that  make  day  to  break; 
Till   like   her   face   it   do   appear, 
And  men  may  think  all   light  rose  there." 

In  other  and  more  passionate  terms  Sir  Kenelm 
painted  the  same  charms  in  his  "Private  Memoirs." 

But  if  Sir  Kenelm  was  a  chivalric  husband,  he  was 
not  a  less  loyal  subject.  How  he  avenged  in  France 
the  honour  of  his  King,  on  the  body  of  a  French  no- 
bleman, may  be  learnt  in  a  curious  tract,  "Sir  Ken- 
elme  Digby 's  Honour  ]\Iaintained.  By  a  most  cour- 
ageous combat  which  he  fought  with  Lord  Mount  le 
Ros,  who  by  base  and  slanderous  words  reviled  our 
King.  Also  the  true  relation  how  he  went  to  the 
Iving  of  France,  who  kindly  intreated  him,  and  sent 
two  hundred  men  to  guard  him  so  far  as  Flanders. 
And  now  he  is  returned  from  Banishment,  and  to 
his  eternall  honour  lives  in  England." 

Sir  Kenelm 's  "Observations  upon  Religio  Medici," 
are  properly  characterized  by  Coleridge  as  those  of 
a  pedant.  They  were  written  whilst  he  was  kept  a 
prisoner,  by  order  of  the  Parliament,  in  "Winchester 
House;  and  the  author  had  the  ludicrous  folly  to 
assert    that    he    both    read    the    "Religio    Medici" 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  45 

throTigh  for  the  first  time,  and  wrote  his  bulky  criti- 
cism upon  it,  in  less  than  twenty-four  hours.  Of  all 
the  claims  that  have  been  advanced  by  authors  for 
the  reputation  of  being  rapid  worlonen,  this  is  per- 
haps the  most  audacious.  For  not  only  was  the  task 
one  that  at  least  would  require  a  month,  but  the  im- 
pudent assertion  that  it  was  accomplished  in  less  than 
a  day  and  night  was  contradicted  by  the  title-page, 
in  which  "the  observations"  are  described  as  "occa- 
sionally written."  Beckford's  vanity  induced  him 
to  boast  that  "Vathek"  wds  composed  at  one  sitting 
of  two  days  and  three  nights;  but  this  statement- 
outrageous  falsehood  though  it  be — was  sober  truth 
compared  with  Sir  KeneLm's  brag. 

But  of  all  Sir  Kenelm's  vagaries,  his  Sympathetic 
Powder  was  the  drollest.  The  composition,  revealed 
after  the  Knight's  death  by  his  chemist  and  steward, 
George  Hartman,  was  effected  in  the  following  man- 
ner:— English  vitriol  was  dissolved  in  warm  water; 
this  solution  was  filtered,  and  then  evaporated  till  a 
thin  scum  appeared  on  the  surface.  It  was  then  left 
undisturbed  and  closely  covered  in  a  cool  place  for 
two  or  three  days,  when  fair,  green,  and  large  crys- 
tals were  evolved.  "Spread  these  crystals,"  contin- 
ues the  chemist,  "abroad  in  a  large  fiat  earthen  dish, 
and  expose  them  to  the  heat  of  the  sun  in  the  dog- 
days,  turning  them  often,  and  the  sun  will  calcine 
them  white;  when  you  see  them  all  white  without, 
beat  them  grossly,  and  expose  them  again  to  the  sun, 
securing  them  from  the  rain ;  when  they  are  well  cal- 
cined, powder  them  finely,  and  expose  this  powder 
again  to  the  sun,  turning  and  stirring  it  often.  Con- 
tinue this  until  it  be  reduced   to   a   white   powder, 


46  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

which  put  up  in  a  glass,  and  tye  it  up  close,  axid 
keep  it  in  a  dry  place." 

The  \Trtues  of  this  powder  were  unfolded  by  Sir 
Kenelm,  in  a  French  oration  delivered  to  "a  solemn 
assembly  of  Nobles  and  Learned  Men  at  Montpellicr, 
in  France."  It  cured  wounds  in  the  following  man- 
ner:—If  any  piece  of  a  wounded  person's  apparel, 
having  on  it  the  stain  of  blood  that  had  proceeded 
from  the  \\x)und,  was  dipped  in  water  holding  in  solu- 
tion some  of  this  sympathetic  powder,  the  woimd 
of  the  injured  person  would  forthwith  commence  a 
healing  process.  It  mattered  not  how  far  distant  the 
sufferer  was  from  the  scene  of  operation.  Sir  Kenelm 
gravely  related  the  case  of  his  friend  Mr.  James 
Howel,  the  author  of  the  "Dendrologia,"  translated 
into  Fi'ench  by  Mons.  Baudoin.  Coming  accident- 
ally on  two  of  his  friends  whilst  they  were  fighting 
a  duel  with  swords,  Howel  endeavoured  to  separate 
them  by  grasping  hold  of  their  weapons.  The  result 
of  this  interference  was  to  show  the  perils  that 

"Environ 
The  man  who  meddles  with  cold  iron." 

His  hands  were  severely  cut,  insomuch  that  some  four 
or  five  days  afterwards,  when  he  called  on  Sir  Ken- 
elm, with  his  wounds  plastered  and  bandaged  up,  he 
said  his  surgeons  feared  the  supervention  of  gan- 
grene. At  Sir  Kenelm 's  request,  he  gave  the  Imight 
a  garter  which  was  stained  with  his  blood.  Sir 
Kenelm  took  it,  and  without  saying  what  he  was  about 
to  do,  dipped  it  in  a  solution  of  his  powder  of  vitriol. 
Instantly  the  sufferer  started. 

"What  ails  you?"  cried  Sir  Kenelm. 

"I  know  not  what  ails  me,"  was  the  answer;  "but 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  47 

I  find  that  I  feel  no  more  pain.  Methinks  that  a 
pleasing  kind  of  f  reshnesse,  as  it  were  a  cold  napkin, 
did  spread  over  my  hand,  which  hath  taken  away 
the  inflammation  that  tormented  me  before." 

"Since  that  you  feel,"  rejoined  Sir  Kenelm,  "al- 
ready so  good  an  effect  of  my  medicament,  I  advise 
you  to  cast  away  all  your  plaisters.  Only  keep  the 
wound  clean,  and  in  moderate  temper  'twixt  heat 
and  cold." 

Mr.  Howel  went  away,  sounding  the  praises  of  his 
physician;  and  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  hearing 
what  had  taken  place,  hastened  to  Sir  Kenelm 's  house 
to  talk  about  it.  The  Duke  and  Knight  dined  togeth-- 
er;  when,  after  dinner,  the  latter,  to  show  his  guest 
the  wondrous  power  of  his  powdei-,  took  the  garter 
out  of  the  solution,  and  dried  it  before  the  fire. 
Scarce!}'  was  it  dry,  when  Mr.  Howel's  servant  ran 
in  to  say  that  his  master's  hand  was  worse  than  ever 
—burning  hot,  as  if  "it  were  betwixt  eoales  of  fire." 
The  messenger  was  dismissed  with  the  assurance  that 
ere  he  reached  home  his  master  would  be  comfortable 
again.  On  the  man  retiring,  Sir  Kenelm  put  the 
garter  back  into  the  solution — the  result  of  which 
was  instant  relief  to  Mr.  Ilowel.  In  six  days  the 
wounds  were  entirely  healed.  This  remarkable  case 
occurred  in  London,  during  the  reign  of  James  the 
First.  "King  James,"  says  Sir  Kenelm,  "required  a 
punctuall  information  of  what  had  passed  touching 
this  cure;  and,  after  it  was  done  and  perfected,  his 
Majesty  would  needs  know  of  me  how  it  was  done- 
having  drolled  with  me  first  (which  he  could  do  with 
a  very  good  grace)  about  a  magician' and  sorcerer." 
On  the  promise   of   inviolable  secrecy,   Sir  Kenelm 


48  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

communicated  the  secret  to  his  Majesty ;  ' '  whereupon 
his  Majesty  made  sundry  proofs,  whence  he  received 
singular  satisfaction." 

The  secret  was  also  communicated  by  Sir  Kenelm 
to  Mayeme,  through  whom  it  was  imparted  to  the 
Duke  of  Mayerne— "a  long  time  his  friend  and  pro- 
tector." After  the  Duke's  death,  his  surgeon  com- 
municated it  to  divers  people  of  quality;  so  that,  ere 
long,  every  country-barber  was  familiar  with  the  dis- 
covery. The  mention  made  of  Mayerne  in  the  lecture 
is  interesting,  as  it  settles  a  point  on  which  Dr.  Aikin 
had  no  information;  viz.,— Whether  Sir  Theodore's 
Barony  of  Aubonne  was  hereditary  or  acquired?  Sir 
Kenelm  says,  "A  little  while  after  the  Doctor  went  to 
France,  to  see  some  fair  territories  that  he  had  pur- 
chased near  Geneva,  which  was  the  Barony  of  Au- 
bonne." 

For  a  time  the  Sympathetic  Powder  was  very  gen- 
erally believed  in ;  and  it  doubtless  did  as  much  good 
as  harm,  by  inducing  people  to  throw  from  their 
wounds  the  abominable  messes  of  grease  and  irritants 
which  were  then  honoured  with  the  name  of  plaisters. 
"What  is  this?"  asked  Abernethy,  when  about  to 
examine  a  patient  with  a  pulsating  tumour,  that  was 
pretty  clearly  an  aneurism. 

"Oh!  that  is  a  plaister,"  said  the  family  doctor. 

"Pooh!"  said  Abernethy,  taking  it  off,  and  pitch- 
ing it  aside. 

"That  was  all  very  well,"  said  the  physician,  on 
describing  the  occurrence ;  ' '  but  that '  pooh '  took  sev- 
eral guineas  out  of  my  pocket. ' ' 

Fashionable  as  the  Sympathetic  Powder  was  for 
several  years,  it  fell  into  complete  disrepute  in  this 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  49 

country  before  the  death  of  Sir  Kenelm.  Hartman, 
the  Knight's  attached  servant,  could,  of  his  own  ex- 
perience, say  nothing  more  for  it  than,  when  dis- 
solved in  water,  it  was  a  useful  astringent  lotion  in 
cases  of  bleeding  from  the  nose;  but  he  mentions  a 
certain  "Mr.  Smith,  in  the  city  of  Augusta,  in  Ger- 
many, who  told  me  that  he  had  a  great  respect  for 
Sir  D.  K.'s  books,  and  that  he  made  his  sympatheticall 
powder  every  year,  and  did  all  his  chiefest  cures  with 
it  in  green  wounds,  with  much  greater  ease  to  the 
patient  than  if  he  had  used  ointments  or  plaisters." 
In  1643  Sir  Kenelm  Digby  was  released  from  the 
confinement  to  which  he  had  been  subjected  by  the 
Pai-liament.  The  condition  of  his  liberty  was  that 
he  forthwith  retired  to  the  Continent— having  pre- 
viously pledged  his  word  as  a  Christian  and  a  gen- 
tleman, in  no  way  to  act  or  plot  against  the  Parlia- 
ment. In  France  he  became  a  celebrity  of  the  high- 
est order.  Returning  to  England  with  the  Restora- 
tion, he  resided  in  "the  last  fair  house  westward  in 
the  north  portico  of  Covent  Garden,"  and  became 
the  centre  of  literary  and  scientific  society.  He  was 
appointed  a  member  of  the  council  of  the  Royal  So- 
ciety, on  the  incorporation  of  that  learned  body  in 
the  year  1663.  His  death  occurred  in  his  sixty-seconJ 
year,  on  the  11th  of  June,  1665 ;  and  his  funeral  took 
place  in  Christ's  Church,  within  Newgate,  where, 
several  years  before,  he  had  raised  a  splendid  tomb 
to  the  memory  of  the  lovely  and  abandoned  Venetia. 
His  epitaph,  by  the  pen  of  R.  Ferrar,  is  concise, 
and  not  too  eulogistic  for  a  monumental  inscrip- 
tion:— 


50  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

"Under  this  tomb  the  matchless  Digby  lies — 
Digby  the  great,  the  valiant,  and  the  wise ; 
This  age's  wonder  for  his  noble  parts, 
Skill'd  in  six  tongues,  and  learned  in  all  the  arts. 
Born  on  the  day  he  died — the  Eleventh  of  June — 
And  that   day  bravely  fought  at  Scanderoon. 
It's  rare  that  one  and  the  same  day  should  be 
His  day  of  birth,  and  death,  and  victory." 

After  his  death,  wdth  the  approval  of  his  son,  was 
published  (1669),  "The  Closet  of  the  Eminently 
Learned  Sir  Kenelme  Digbie,  Kt.,  Opened:  "VSTiereby 
is  discovered  Several  ways  for  making  of  Metheglin, 
Sider,  Cherry- Wine,  &e.;  together  with  excellent 
Directions  for  Cookery:  as  also  for  Preserving,  Con- 
serving, Candying,  &c."  The  frontispiece  of  this 
Tvork  is  a  portrait  of  Sir  Kenelm,  with  a  shelf  over 
his  head,  adorned  with  his  five  principal  works,  enti' 
tied,  "Plants,"  "Sj-m.  Powder,"  "His  Cookery," 
"Rects.  in  Physiek,  &c,"  "Sr.  K.  Digby  of  Bodyes." 

In  Sir  Kenelm 's  receipts  for  cookery  the  gastro- 
nome would  find  something  to  amuse  him,  and  more 
to  arouse  his  horror.  Minced  pies  are  made  (as  they 
still  are  amongst  the  homely  of  some  counties)  of 
meat,  raisins,  and  spices,  mixed.  Some  of*  the  sweet 
dishes  verj'  closely  resemble  what  are  still  served  on 
English  tables.  The  potages  are  well  enough.  But 
the  barley-puddings,  pear-puddings,  and  oat-meal 
puddings  give  ill  promise  to  the  ear.  It  is  recom- 
mended to  batter  up  a  couple  of  eggs  and  a  lot  of 
brown  sugar  in  a  cup  of  tea;— a  not  less  impious 
profanation  of  the  sacred  leaves  than  that  committed 
by  the  Highlanders,  mentioned  by  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
who,  ignorant  of  the  proper  mode  of  treating  a  pound 
of  fragrant  Bohea,  served  it  up  in— melted  butter  I 


CHAPTER  IV. 


SIB  HANS  SLOANE. 


The  lives  of  three  physicians— Sydenham,  Sir  Haas 
Sloane,  and  Heberden— completely  bridge  over  the 
iincertain  period  between  old  empiricism  and  modern 
science.  The  son  of  a  wealthy  Dorsetshire  sqtiire, 
Sydenham  was  born  in  1624,  and  received  the  most 
important  part  of  his  education  in  the  University  of 
Oxford,  where  he  was  created  Bachelor  of  Medicine 
14th  April,  1648.  Settling  in  London  about  1661, 
he  was  admitted  a  Licentiate  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Phj'sicians  25th  June,  1665.  Subsequently  he  ac- 
quired an  M.D.  degree  at  Cambridge,  but  this  step 
he  did  not  take  till  17th  May,  1676.  He  also  studied 
physic  at  ^Montpellier ;  but  it  may  be  questioned  if 
his  professional  success  was  a  consequence  of  hia 
labours  in  any  seat  of  learning,  so  much  as  a  result 
of  that  knowledge  of  the  world  which  he  gained  in 
the  Civil  war  as  a  captain  in  the  Parliamentary  army. 
It  was  he  who  replied  to  Sir  Richard  Blackmore'g 
inquiry  after  the  best  course  of  study  for  a  medical 
student  to  pursue— "Read  Don  Quixote;  it  is  a  very 
good  book— I  read  it  still."      Medical  critics  have  felt 


52  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

it  incumbent  on  themselves  to  explain  away  this  mem- 
orable answer— attributing  it  to  the  doctor's  cynical 
temper  rather  than  his  scepticism  with  regard  to 
medicine.  When,  however,  the  state  of  medical  sci- 
ence in  the  seventeenth  century  is  considered,  one  has 
not  much  difficulty  in  believing  that  the  shrewd  phy- 
sician meant  exactly  what  he  said.  There  is  no  ques- 
tion but  that  as  a  practitioner  he  was  a  man  of  many 
doubts.  The  author  of  the  capital  sketch  of  Syden- 
ham in  the  "Lives  of  British  Physicians"  says— "At 
the  commencement  of  his  professional  life  it  is 
handed  down  to  us  by  tradition,  that  it  was  his  or- 
dinary custom,  when  consulted  by  his  patients  for 
the  first  time,  to  hear  attentively  the  story  of  their 
complaints,  and  then  say,  'Well,  I  will  consider  of 
your  ca.se,  and  in  a  few  days  will  order  something 
for  you.'  But  he  soon  discovered  that  this  deliberate 
method  of  proceeding  was  not  satisfactory,  and  that 
many  of  the  persons  so  received  forgot  to  come  again ; 
and  he  was  consequently  obliged  to  adopt  the  usual 
practice  of  prescribing  immediately  for  the  diseases 
of  those  who  sought  his  advice."  A  doctor  who  feels 
the  need  for  such  deliberation  must  labour  under 
considerable  perplexity  as  to  the  proper  treatment 
of  his  patient.  But  the  low  opinion  he  expressed  to 
Blackmore  of  books  as  instructors  in  medicine,  he 
gave  publicly  with  greater  decorum,  but  almost  as 
forcibly,  in  a  dedication  addressed  to  Dr.  Mapletoft, 
where  he  says,  ' '  The  medical  art  could  not  be  learned 
so  well  and  so  surely  as  by  use  and  experience;  and 
that  he  who  would  pay  the  nicest  and  most  accurate 
attention  to  the  symptoms  of  distempers  would  suc^ 
ceed  best  in  finding  out  the  true  means  of  cure." 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  53 

Sydenham  died  in  his  house,  in  Pall  Mall,  on  the 
29th  of  December,  1689.  In  his  last  years  he  was  a 
martyr  to  gout,  a  malady  fast  becoming  one  of  the 
good  things  of  the  past.  Dr.  Forbes  Winslow,  in  his 
"Physic  and  Physicians"— gives  a  picture,  at  the 
same  time  painful  and  laughable,  of  the  doctor's  suf- 
ferings. "Sydenham  died  of  the  gout;  and  in  the 
latter  part  of  his  life  is  described  as  visited  with  that 
dreadful  disorder,  and  sitting  near  an  open  window, 
on  the  ground  floor  of  his  house,  in  St.  James's 
Square,  respiring  the  cool  breeze  on  a  summer's  eve- 
ning, and  reflecting,  with  a  serene  countenance  and 
great  complacency,  on  the  alleviation  to  human  mis- 
ery that  his  skill  in  his  art  enabled  him  to  give. 
Whilst  this  divine  man  was  enjoying  one  of  these 
delicious  reveries,  a  thief  took  away  from  the  table, 
near  to  which  he  was  sitting,  a  silver  tankard  filled 
with  his  favourite  beverage,  small  beer,  in  which  a 
sprig  of  rosemary  had  been  immersed,  and  ran  off 
with  it.  Sydenham  was  too  lame  to  ring  his  bell,  and 
too  feeble  in  his  voice  to  give  the  alarm. ' ' 

Heberden,  the  medical  friend  of  Samuel  Johnson, 
was  born  in  London  in  1710,  and  died  on  the  17th  of 
May,  1801.  Between  Sydenham  and  Heberden  came 
Sir  Hans  Sloane,  a  man  ever  to  be  mentioned  hon- 
ourably amongst  those  physicians  who  have  contrib- 
uted to  the  advancement  of  science,  and  the  amelior- 
ation of  society. 

Pope  says: — 

"'Tis  strange  the  miser  should  his  cares  employ. 
To  gain  those  riches  he  can  ne'er  enjoy; 
Is  it  less  strange  the  prodigal  should  waste 
His  wealth  to  purchase  what  he  ne'er  can  taste? 
Not  for  himself  he  sees,  or  hears,  or  eats. 


54  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

Artists  must  chuse  his  pictures,  music,  meats; 
He   buys   for   Topham   drawings  and  designs, 
For   Pembrol<e   statues,   dirty  gods,   and   coins ; 
Rare  monl^ish  manuscripts,   for  Hearne  alone. 
And  books   for   Mead,   and  butterflies   for   Sloane." 
Pope's  Moral  Essays,  Epistle  IV. 

Hans  Sloane  (the  seventh  and  youngest  child  of 
Alexander  Sloane,  receiver-general  of  taxes  for  the 
county  of  Down,  before  and  after  the  Civil  war,  and 
a  commissioner  of  array,  after  the  restoration  of 
Charles  II.)  was  born  at  Killileagh  in  1660.  An 
Irishman  by  birth,  and  a  Scotchman  by  descent,  he 
exhibited  in  no  ordinary  degree  the  energy  and  po- 
liteness of  either  of  the  sister  countries.  After  a 
childhood  of  extreme  delicacy  he  came  to  England, 
and  devoted  himself  to  medical  study  and  scientific 
investigation.  Having  passed  through  a  course  of 
careful  labour  in  London,  he  visited  Paris  and  Mont- 
pellier,  and,  returning  from  the  Continent,  became 
the  intimate  friend  of  Sydenham.  On  the  21st  of 
January,  1685,  he  was  elected  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society;  and  on  the  12th  of  April,  1687,  he  became  a 
Fellow  of  the  College  of  Physicians.  In  the  Sep- 
tember of  the  latter  year  he  sailed  to  the  West  Indies, 
in  the  character  of  physician  to  the  Duke  of  Albe- 
marle, who  had  been  appointed  Governor  of  Jamaica. 
His  residence  in  that  quarter  of  the  globe  was  not  of 
long  duration.  On  the  death  of  his  Grace  the  doctor 
attended  the  Duchess  back  to  England,  arriving  once 
more  in  London  in  the  July  of  1689.  From  that  time 
he  remained  in  the  capital— his  professional  career, 
his  social  position,  and  his  scientific  reputation  being 
alike  brilliant.  From  1694  to  1730,  he  was  a  physi- 
cian of  Christ's  Hospital.  On  the  30th  of  November, 
1693,  he  was  elected  Secretary  of  the  Royal  Society. 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTOES.  55 

In  1701  lie  was  made  an  M.D.  of  Oxford ;  and  in  1705 
lie  was  elected  into  the  fellowship  of  the  College  of 
Physicians  of  Edinburgh.  In  1708  he  was  chosen  a 
Fellcrw  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Sciences  of  Paris. 
Four  years  later  he  was  elected  a  member  of  the 
Royal  Society  of  Berlin.  In  1719  he  became  presi- 
dent of  the  College  of  Physicians;  and  in  1727  he 
was  created  President  of  the  Royal  Society  (on  the 
death  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton),  and  was  appointed  phy» 
sician  to  King  George  II.  In  addition  to  these  hon- 
ours, he  won  the  distinction  of  being  the  first*  medi- 
cal practitioner  advanced  to  the  dignity  of  a  baron- 
etcy. 

In  1742,  Sir  Hans  Sloane  quitted  his  professional 
residence  at  Bloomsbury;  and  in  the  society  of  his 
library,  museum,  and  a  select  number  of  scientific 
friends,  spent  the  last  years  of  his  life  at  Chelsea, 
the  manor  of  which  parish  he  had  purchased  in  1722. 

In  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  1748,  there  is  a 
long  but  interesting  account  of  a  visit  paid  by  the 

*  The  learned  Librarian  of  the  College  of  Physicians  in  a 
letter  to  me,  elicited  by  the  first  edition  of  "The  Book  About 
Doctors,"  observes  on  this  point:  "Sir  Hans  Sloane  is  com- 
monly stated  to  have  been  the  first  medical  baronet,  but  I 
think  incorrectly.  Sir  Edmund  Greaves.  .\I.  D.,  a  Fellow  of 
the  College,  vvno  died  nth  Nov.,  i68o,  is  said,  and  I  am  dis- 
posed to  think  with  truth,  to  have  been  created  a  Baronet  at 
Oxford  in  1645.  Anthony  A.  Wood  it  is  true  calls  him  a 
'pretended  baronet,'  but  he  was  acknowledged  to  be  a  true 
and  veritable  one  by  his  colleagues  of  our  college,  and  con- 
sidering the  jealousy  of  physicians,  which  is  not  quite  so 
great  by  the  way  as  you  seem  to  think,  this  is  no  small  testi- 
mony in  favour  of  my  belief.  In  the  Sth  edition  of  Guillim's 
Heraldry  he  is  made  to  be  the  4S0th  baronet  from  the  first  in- 
stitution of  the  order,  and  is  placed  between  William  de  Borcel 
of  Amsterdam  and  George  Carteret  of  Jersey.  If  you  think 
the  matter  worthy  of  investigation  you  may  turn  to  Nash's 
Worcestershire,  vol.  i.,  p.   198." 


56  A  BOOK  .VBOUT  DOCTORS. 

Prince  and  Princess  of  Wales  to  the  Baronet's  mu- 
seum. Sir  Hans  receivecl  his  royal  guest.s  and  enter- 
tained them  with  a  banquet  of  curiosities,  the  tables 
being  eleveriy  shifted,  so  that  a  succession  of 
"courses,"  under  glass  cases,  gave  the  charm  of  va- 
riety to  the  labours  of  observation. 

In  his  old  age  Sir  Hans  became  sadly  penurious, 
grudging  even  the  ordinary  expenses  of  hospitality. 
His  intimate  friend,  George  Edwards,  P.R.S.,  gives, 
in  his  "Gleanings  of  Natural  History,"  some  par- 
ticulars of  the  old  Baronet,  which  present  a  stronger 
picture  of  his  parsimony  than  can  be  found  in  the 
pages  of  his  avowed  detractors. 

"Sir  Hans,  in  the  decline  of  his  life,  left  London 
and  retired  to  his  manor-house,  at  Chelsea,  whcra 
he  resided  about  fourteen  years  before  he  died. 
After  his  retirement  at  Chelsea,  he  requested  it  as 
a  favour  to  him  ( though  I  embraced  it  as  an  honour 
due  to  myself),  that  I  would  visit  him  every  week, 
in  order  to  divert  him  for  an  hour  or  two  with  the 
common  news  of  the  town,  and  with  everything  par- 
ticular that  should  happen  amongst  his  acquaintance 
of  the  Royal  Society,  and  other  ingenious  gentlemen, 
many  of  whom  I  was  weekly  conversant  with;  and 
I  seldom  missed  drinking  coffee  with  him  on  a  Sat- 
urday, during  the  whole  time  of  his  retirement  at 
Chelsea.  He  was  so  infirm  as  to  be  wholly  confined 
to  his  house,  except  sometimes,  though  rarely,  taking 
a  little  air  in  his  garden  in  a  wheeled  chair ;  and  this 
confinement  made  him  very  desirous  to  see  any  of  his 
old  acquaintance,  to  amuse  him.  He  was  strictly 
careful  that  I  should  be  at  no  expense  in  my  jour- 
neys from  London  to  Chelsea  to  wait  on  him,  knowing 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  57 

that  I  did  not  superabound  in  the  gifts  of  fortune. 
He  would  calculate  what  the  expense  of  eoach-hire, 
waterage,  or  any  other  little  charge  that  might  attend 
on  my  journeys  backward  and  forward  would  amount 
to,  and  would  oblige  me  annually  to  accept  of  it, 
though  I  would  willingly  have  declined  it." 

Such  generosity  speaks  of  a  parsimonious  temper 
and  habit  more  forcibly  than  positive  acts  of  stingi- 
ness would. 

On  the  death  of  Sir  Hans  Sloane,  on  the  11th  of 
January,  1753,  his  museum  and  library  passed  into 
the  hands  of  the  nation  for  a  comparatively  small 
sum  of  money,  and  became  the  nucleus  of  our  British 
Museum. 

The  Royal  Society  of  Sir  Hans  Sloane 's  time  dif- 
fered widely  from  the  Royal  Society  of  the  present 
day.  The  reader  of  Mr.  Charles  Weld's  history  of 
that  distinguished  fraternity  smiles  a  painful  smile 
at  the  feeble  steps  of  its  first  members  in  the  direc- 
tion of  natural  science.  The  eiBcacy  of  the  divining 
rod,  and  th:  merits  of  Sir  Kenebn  Digby's  sjinpa- 
thetic  powder,  were  the  subjects  that  occupied  the 
attention  of  the  philosophers  of  Charles  II. 's  reign. 
Entries  such  as  the  following  are  the  records  of  their 
proceedings:— 

"June  5. — Col.  Tuke  related  the  manner  of  the 
rain  like  corn  at  Norwich,  and  Mr  Boyle  and  Mr  Eve- 
lyn were  entreated  to  sow  some  of  those  rained  seeds 
to  try  their  product. 

"Magneticall  cures  were  then  discoursed  of.  Sir 
Gilbert  Talbot  promised  to  bring  what  he  knew  of 
sympathetica!  cures.     Those  that  had  any  powder 


58  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

of  sympathy  were  desired  to  bring  some  of  it  at  the 
next  meeting. 

"Mr  Boyle  related  of  a  gentleman,  who,  having 
made  some  experiments  of  the  ayre,  essayed  the 
quicksilver  experiment  at  the  top  and  bottom  of  a 
hill,  when  there  was  found  three  inches  difference. 

"Dr  Charleton  promised  to  bring  in  that  white 
powder,  which,  put  into  water,  heates  that. 

"The  Duke  of  Buckingham  promised  to  cause 
charcoal  to  be  distilled  by  his  chymist. 

"His  Grace  promised  to  bring  into  the  society  a 
piece  of  a  unicorne's  horn. 

"Sir  Kenelme  Digby  related  that  the  calcined  pow- 
der of  toades  reverberated,  applyed  in  bagges  upon 
the  stomach  of  a  pestiferate  body,  cures  it  by  several 
applications." 

"June  i5.  — Colonel  Tuke  brought  in  the  history 
of  rained  seedes,  which  were  reported  to  have  fallen 
downe  from  heaven  in  Warwickshire  and  ShroD- 
ghire,  &c. 

"That  the  dyving  engine  be  going  forward  with 
all  speed,  and  the  treasurer  to  procure  the  lead  and 
moneys. 

"Ordered,  that  Friday  next  the  engine  be  tried 
at  Deptford." 

"June  26.— Dr  Ent,  Dr  Clarke,  Dr  Goddard,  and 
Dr  Whistler,  were  appointed  curators  of  the  propo- 
sition made  by  Sir  G.  Talbot,  to  torment  a  man  pres- 
ently with  the  sjTnpatheticall  powder. 

"Sir  G.  Talbot  brought  in  his  experiments  of  the 
sympathetick  cures." 

It  is  true  that  these  passages  relate  to  transactions 
of  the  Roj'al  Society  that  occurred  long  before  Sir 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  59 

Hans  was  one  of  the  body.  But  even  in  his  time  the 
advances  made  towards  greater  enlightenment  were 
few  and  feeble,  when  compared  with  the  strides  of 
science  during  the  last  century.  So  simple  and  child- 
ish were  the  operations  and  speculations  of  the  So- 
ciety in  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  that 
even  Sir  John  Hill  was  able  to  cover  them  with  ridi- 
cule. 

Sir  Hans  had  two  medical  successors  in  the  presi- 
dentship of  the  Royal  Society— Sir  John  Pringle, 
Bart.,  elected  Nov.  30,  1772,  and  William  Hyde  Wol- 
laston,  M.D.,  elected  June  29,  1820.  The  last-men- 
tioned physician  had  but  a  brief  tenure  of  the  dignity, 
for  he  retired  from  the  exalted  post  on  Nov.  30,  1820, 
in  favor  of  Sir  Humphrey  Davy,  Bart. 

Humphrey  Davy  (the  son  of  the  Penzance  wood- 
carver,  who  was  known  to  his  acquaintances  as  "Lit- 
tle Carver  Davy")  was  the  most  acute  natural  phil- 
osopher of  his  generation,  and  at  the  same  time  about 
the  vainest  and  most  eccentric  of  his  eountiymen. 
With  all  his  mental  energy,  he  was  disfigured  by  a 
moral  pettiness,  which,  to  a  certain  extent,  justified 
Wordsworth's  unaccustomed  bitterness  in  "A  Poet's 
Epitaph":— 

"Physician  art  thou?  one  all  eyes; 
Philosopher?   a  fingering  slave. 
One  that   would  peep   and  botanize 
Upon  his  mother's  grave ! 

"Wrapt  closely  in  thy  sensual  fleece, 

O  turn  aside — and  take,  I  pray, 

That  he  below  may  rest  in  peace, 

Thy  ever-dwindling  soul  away !" 

At  the  summit  of  his  success,  Davy  was  morbidly 
sensitive  of  the  humility  of  his  extraction.  That  his 
father  had   been   a  respectable   mechanic — that  his 


60  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

mother,  on  her  husband's  death,  had  established  her- 
self as  milliner  in  Penzance,  in  order  to  apprentice 
her  son  to  an  apothecary  in  that  town— that  by  his 
own  intellects,  in  the  hard  battle  of  life,  he  had  raised 
himself  from  obscure  poverty  to  a  brilliant  eminence 
—were  to  him  facts  of  shame,  instead  of  pride.  In 
contradiction  to  this  moral  cowardice,  there  was  in 
him,  on  some  points,  an  extravagant  eccentricity, 
w'hich,  in  most  men,  would  have  pointed  to  impervi- 
ousness  to  ridicule.  The  demands  of  society,  and 
the  labours  of  his  laboratory,  of  course  left  him  with 
but  little  leisure.  He,  however,  affected  not  to  have 
time  enoucrh  for  the  ordinary  decencies  of  the  toilet. 
Cold  ablutions  neither  his  constitution  nor  his  phil- 
osophic temperament  required,  so  he  rarely  washed 
himself.  And,  on  the  plea  of  saving  time,  he  iised  to 
put  on  his  clean  linen  over  his  dirty — so  that  he  has 
been  known  to  wear  at  the  same  time  five  shirts  and 
five  pairs  of  stockings.  On  the  rare  occasions  when 
he  divested  himself  of  his  superfluous  integuments, 
he  caused  infinite  perplexity  to  his  less  intimate 
friends,  who  could  not  account  for  his  rapid  transi- 
tion from  corpulence  to  tenuity. 

The  ludicrousness  of  his  costume  did  not  end  there. 
Like  many  other  men  of  powerful  and  excitable 
minds,  he  was  very  fond  of  angling;  and  on  the  banks 
of  the  Thames  he  might  be  found,  at  all  unsuitable 
seasons,  in  a  costume  that  must  have  been  a  source  of 
no  common  merriment  to  the  river  nymphs.  His 
coat  and  breeches  were  of  green  cloth.  On  his  head 
he  wore  a  hat  that  Dr.  Paris  describes  as  "having 
been  originally  intended  for  a  coal-heaver,  but  as 
having,  when  in  its  raw  state,  been  dyed  green  by 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  61 

some  sort  of  pigment."  In  this  attire  Davy  flattered 
himself  that  he  resembled  vegetable  life  as  closely  as 
it  was  possible  for  mortal  to  do. 

But  if  his  angling  dress  was  droll,  his  shooting 
costume  was  more  so.  His  great  fear  as  an  angler  was 
that  the  fish  should  escape  him;  his  greatest  anxiety 
as  a  bearer  of  a  gun  was  to  escape  being  shot.  In 
the  one  character,  concealment  was  his  chief  object 
—in  the  other,  revelation.  So  that  he  might  be  seen 
from  a  distance,  and  run  fewer  chances  of  being  fired 
into  by  accident,  he  was  accustomed  on  shooting  ex- 
cursions, to  crown  himself  with  a  broad-brimmed 
hat,  covered  with  scarlet.  It  never  struck  him  that, 
in  our  Protestant  England,  he  incurred  imminent 
peril  of  being  mistaken  for  a  cardinal,  and  knocked 
over  accordingly. 

Naturally,  Davy  was  of  a  poetical  temperament; 
and  some  of  his  boyish  poetry  possesses  merit  that 
unquestionably  justifies  the  anticipation  formed  by 
his  poet-friends  of  the  flights  his  more  mature  muse 
would  take.  But  when  his  intellect  became  absorbed 
in  the  pursuits  by  which  he  rendered  inestimable 
service  to  his  species,  he  never  renewed  the  bright 
imaginings  of  his  day-spring. 

On  passing  (in  1809)  through  the  galleries  of  the 
Louvre,  he  could  find  nothing  more  worthy  of  ad- 
miration that  the  fine  frames  of  the  pictures.  "What 
an  extraordinary  collection  of  fine  frames!"  he  ob- 
served to  the  gentleman  who  acted  as  his  guide, 
amidst  the  treasures  of  art  gathered  from  every  part 
of  the  Continent.  His  attention  was  directed  to  the 
"Transfiguration";  when,  on  its  being  suggested  to 
him  that  he  was  looking  at  a  rather  well-executed  pic- 


62  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

ture,  he  said,  coldly,  "Indeed!  I  am  glad  I  have  seen 
it."  In  the  same  way,  the  statues  were  to  him  simply 
blocks  of  material.  In  the  Apollo  Belvidere,  the 
Laocoon,  and  the  Venus  dei  ]\Iediei,  he  saw  no  beauty; 
but  when  his  eyes  rested  on  the  Antinous,  treated  in 
the  Egyptian  style,  and  sculptured  in  alabaster,  he 
made  an  exclamation  of  delight,  and  cried,  "Gracious 
powers,  what  a  beautiful  stalactite!" 

More  amusing  than  even  these  criticisms,  is  a  story 
told  of  Lady  Davy,  who  accompanied  her  husband 
to  Paris.  She  was  walking  in  the  Tuileries  garden, 
wearing  the  fashionable  London  bonnet  of  the  day- 
shaped  like  a  cockle-shell.  The  Parisians,  who  just 
then  were  patronizing  bonnets  of  enormous  dimen- 
sions, were  astounded  at  the  apparition  of  a  head- 
dress so  opposed  to  their  notions  of  the  everlasting 
fitness  of  things;  and  with  the  good  breeding  for 
which  they  are  and  have  long  been  proverbial,  they 
surrounded  the  daring  stranger,  and  stared  at  her. 
This  was  sufficiently  unpleasant  to  a  timid  English 
lady.  But  her  discomfort  had  only  commenced.  Ere 
another  minute  or  two  had  elapsed,  one  of  the  inspec- 
tors of  the  garden  approached,  and  telling  her  Lady- 
ship that  no  cause  of  rasscmblcment  could  be  per- 
mitted in  that  locality,  requested  her  to  retire. 
Alanned  and  indignant,  she  appealed  to  some  officers 
of  the  Imperial  Guard,  but  they  could  afford  her  no 
assistance.  One  of  them  politely  offered  her  his  arm, 
and  proposed  to  conduct  her  to  a  carriage.  But  by 
the  time  she  had  decided  to  profit  by  the  courtesy, 
such  a  crowd  had  gathered  together,  that  it  was 
found  necessary  to  send  for  a  guard  of  infantry,  and 
remove  la  belle  Anglaisc,  surrounded  with  bayonets. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  APOTHECARIES  AND  SIR  SAMUEL  GARTH. 

Baldwin  Hamey,  whose  manuscript  memoirs  of 
eminent  physicians  are  among  the  treasures  of  the 
College,  praises  Winston  because  he  treated  his  apoth- 
ecary as  a  master  might  a  slave.  "Heriliter  imper- 
avit,"  says  the  Doctor.  The  learned  Thomas  Win- 
ston, anatomy  lecturer  at  Gresham  College,  lived  to 
the  age  of  eighty  years,  and  died  on  the  24th  of 
October,  1655.  He  knew,  therefore,  apothecaries  in 
the  day  of  their  humility— before  prosperity  had 
encouraged  them  to  compete  with  their  professional 
superiors. 

The  apothecaries  of  the  Elizabethan  era  com- 
pounded their  medicines  much  as  medicines  are  com- 
pounded at  the  present— as  far  as  manipulation  and 
measuring  are  concerned.  Prescriptions  have  altered, 
but  shop-customs  have  undergone  only  a  very  slight 
change.  The  apothecaries'  table  of  weights  and 
measures,  still  in  use,  was  the  rule  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  the  sjonbols  (for  a  pound,  an  ounce,  a 
drachm,  a  scruple,  a  grain,  &c.)  remain  at  this  day 
just  what  they  were  three  hundred  years  ago. 


64  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

Our  good  friend,  William  Bulleyn,  gave  the  fol-- 
lowing  excellent  rules  for  an  apothecary's  life  and 
conduct:— 

"tue  apoticakye. 

"1.— Must  fyrst  serve  God,  forsee  the  end,  be 
elenlj^,  pity  the  poore. 

"2.— Must  not  be  suborned  for  money  to  hurt  man- 
kynde. 

"3.— His  place  of  dwelling  and  shop  to  be  clenly 
to  please  the  sences  withal. 

"4.— His  garden  must  be  at  hand  with  plenty  of 
herbes,  seedes,  and  rootes. 

"5.— To  sow,  set,  plant,  gather,  preserve  and  kepe 
them  in  due  tyme. 

"6.— To  read  Dioscorides,  to  know  ye  natures  of 
plants  and  herbes. 

"7.— To  invent  medicines  to  chose  by  coloure,  tast, 
odour,  figure,  &c. 

"8.— To  have  his  morters,  stilles,  pottes,  filters, 
glasses,  boxes,  cleane  and  sweete. 

"9.— To  have  charcoals  at  hand,  to  make  decoc- 
tions, syrupes,  &c. 

"10. — To  kepe  his  cleane  ware  closse,  and  cast 
away  the  baggage. 

"11.— To  have  two  places  in  his  shop— one  most 
cleane  for  the  phisik,  and  a  baser  place  for  the  chir- 
urgie  stuff. 

"12.— That  he  neither  increase  nor  d-minish  the 
physician's  bill  (t.  e.  prescription),  and  kepe  it  for 
his  own  discharge. 

"13.— That  he  neither  buy  nor  sel  rotten  drugges. 

"14.— That  he  peruse  often  his  wares,  that  they 
corrupt  not. 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  65 

"15.— That  he  put  not  in  quid  pro  quo  (i.  e.,  use 
one  ingredient  in  the  place  of  another,  when  dispens- 
ing a  physician's  prescription)   without  advysement. 

"16.— That  he  may  open  wel  a  vein  for  to  helpe 
pleuresy. 

"17.— That  he  meddle  only  in  his  vocation. 

"18.— That  he  delyte  to  reede  Nicolaus  Myrepsus, 
Valerius  Cordus,  Johannes  Placaton,  the  Lubik,  &c. 

"19.— That  he  do  remember  his  ofBce  is  only  to  be 
ye  physician's  cooke. 

"20. — That  he  use  true  measure  and  waight. 

"21.— To  remember  his  end,  and  the  judgment  of 
God:  and  thus  I  do  commend  him  to  God,  if  he  be 
not  covetous,  or  crafty,  seeking  his  own  lucre  before 
other  men's  help,  succour,  and  comfort." 

The  apothecaries  to  whom  these  excellent  direc- 
tions were  given  were  only  tradesmen— grocers  who 
paid  attention  to  the  commands  of  physicians.  They 
were  not  required  to  have  any  knowledge  of  the  med- 
ical science,  beyond  what  might  be  obtained  by  the 
perusal  of  two  or  three  writers ;  they  were  not  to  pre- 
sume to  administer  drugs  on  their  own  judgment  and 
responsibilitj'— or  to  perform  any  surgical  operation, 
except  phlebotomy,  and  that  only  for  one  malady.  The 
custom  was  for  the  doctors  to  sell  their  most  valuable 
remedies  as  nostrums,  keeping  their  composition  a  se- 
cret to  themselves,  and  themselves  taking  the  price 
paid  for  them  by  the  sick.  The  commoner  drugs  were 
vended  to  patients  by  the  drug-merchants  (who  in- 
variably dealt  in  groceries  for  culinary  use,  as  well 
as  in  medicinal  simples),  acting  under  the  directions 
of  the  learned  graduates  of  the  Faculty. 

In  the  fourth  year  of  James  I.,  a  charter  was  ob- 

*-5 


66  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

tained,  that  "Willed,  ordained,  and  granted,  that  all 
and  singular  the  Freemen  of  the  Mystery  of  Grocers 
and  Apothecaries  of  the  City  of  London  .... 
should  and  might  be  .  .  .  one  body  corporate 
and  politique,  in  deed,  fact,  and  name,  by  the  namo 
of  Warden  and  Commonalty  of  the  Mystery  of  Gro- 
cers of  the  Citj'  of  London."  But  in  the  thirteenth 
year  of  the  same  king,  the  apothecaries  and  grocers 
were  disunited.  At  the  advice  of  Theodore  de  May- 
erne  and  Henry  Atkins,  doctors  in  physick,  another 
charter  was  granted,  constituting  drug-venders  a  dis- 
tinct company.  Amongst  the  apothecaries  mentioned 
in  this  charter  are  the  names  of  the  most  respectable- 
families  of  the  country.  Gideon  de  Laune,  one  of  this 
fii-st  batch  of  apothecaries,  amassed  a  very  large  for- 
tune in  his  vocation,  and  founded  a  family  at  Shar- 
sted,  in  Kent,  from  which  several  pei-sons  of  distinc- 
tion draw  part  of  their  origin;  and  not  a  few  of  De 
Laune 's  brethren  were  equally  lucky. 

At  their  first  foundation  as  a  company  the  apothe- 
caries were  put  completely  under  control  of  the  Col- 
lege of  Physicians,  who  were  endowed  with  dangerous 
powers  of  inspecting  their  wares  and  punishing  their 
malpractices.  But  before  a  generation  had  passed 
away,  the  apothecaries  had  gained  such  a  firm  foot- 
ing in  society  that  the  more  prosperous  of  them  could 
afford  to  laugh  at  the  censures  of  the  College;  and 
before  the  close  of  a  century  they  were  fawned  upon 
by  young  physicians,  and  were  in  a  position  to  quarrel 
with  the  old. 

The  doctors  of  that  day  knew  so  little  that  the 
apothecaries  found  it  easy  to  know  as  much.  A 
knowledge  of  the  herbals,  an  acquaintance  with  the  in- 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  67 

gredients  and  doses  of  a  hundred  empirical  com- 
pounds and  systems  of  maltreating  eruptive  fevers, 
gout,  and  consumption,  constituted  all  the  medical 
learning  of  such  men  as  Mayerne  or  Gibbons.  To 
pick  up  that  amount  of  information  was  no  hard  task 
for  an  ambitious  apothecary. 

Soon  the  leading  apothecaries  began  to  prescribe  on 
their  own  responsibility,  without  the  countenance  of 
a  member  of  the  College.  If  they  were  threatened 
with  censure  or  other  punishment  by  a  regular  phy- 
sician, they  retorted  by  discontinuing  to  call  him  in 
to  consultations.  Jealousies  soon  sprang  up.  Starv- 
ing graduates,  with  the  diplomas  of  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge and  the  certificates  of  the  College  in  their  pock- 
ets, were  embittered  by  having  to  trudge  the  pave- 
ments of  London,  and  see  the  mean  medicine-mixers 
(who  had  scarce  scholarship  enough  to  construe  a 
Latin  bill)  dashing  by  in  their  carriages.  Ere  long 
the  heartburnings  broke  out  in  a  paper  warfare,  an 
rancorous  and  disreputable  as  any  squabble  embalmed 
in  literature.  The  scholars  called  the  rich  tradesmen 
thieves,  sw'indlers,  and  unlettered  blockheads.  The 
rich  tradesmen  taunted  the  scholars  with  discontent, 
falsehood,  and  ignorance  of  everything  except  Latin 
and  Greek. 

Pope  took  the  side  of  the  physicians.  Like  John- 
son, Parr,  and  all  men  of  enlightenment  and  sound 
scholarship,  he  had  a  high  opinion  of  the  Faculty.  It 
is  indeed  told  of  him,  on  questionable  authority,  that 
on  his  death-bed,  when  he  heard  the  bickerings  of  Dr. 
Burton  and  Dr.  Thompson,  each  accusing  the  other  of 
maltreating  his  patient,  he  levelled  with  his  last 
breath  an  epigram  at  the  two  rivals— 


68  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

"Dunces,  rejoice,  forgive  all   censures  past — 
The  greatest  dunce  has  killed  your  foe  at  last." 

To  Dr.  Arbuthnot  he  wroto— 

"Friend  to  my  life,  which  did  not  you  prolong, 
The  world  had  wanted  many  an   idle   song." 

His  feeble  health,  making  his  life  a  long  disease, 

never  allowed  him  vigour  and  confidence  enough  to 

display  ingratitude  to  the  Faculty,  and  illustrate  the 

truth  of  the  lines— 

"God  and  the  doctor  we  alike  adore. 
But  only  when  in  danger,  not  before; 
The  danger  o'er,  both  are  alike  requited, 
God  is  forgotten,  and  the  doctor  slighted." 

His  habitual  tone,  when  speaking  of  the  medical 
profession,  was  that  of  warm  admiration  and  affec- 
tion.   In  the  "Imitations  of  Horace"  he  says— 

"Weak  though  I  am  of  limb,  and  short  of  sight, 
Far  from  a  lynx,  and  not  a  giant  quite, 
I'll  do  what  Mead  and   Cheselden  advise, 
To  keep  these  limbs,  and  to  preserve  these  eyes." 

It  is  true  that  he  elsewhere  ridicules  Mead's  fond- 
ness for  rare  books  and  Sloane's  passion  for  butter- 
flies; but  at  the  close  of  his  days  he  wrote  in  a  con- 
fidential letter  to  a  friend  of  the  Faculty,  "They  are 
in  general  the  most  amiable  companions  and  the  best 
friends,  as  well  as  the  most  learned  men  I  know. ' ' 

In  the  protracted  dissensions  between  the  physi- 
cians and  the  apothecaries  Pope  was  a  cordial  sup- 
porter of  the  former.  When  he  accused,  in  the  "Es- 
say on  Criticism,"  the  penny-a-lining  critics  of  ac- 
quiring their  slender  knowledge  of  the  poetic  art  from 
the  poets  they  assailed,  he  compared  them  to  apothe- 
caries whose  scientific  information  was  pilfered  from 
the  prescriptions  they  were  required  to  dispense. 


A  BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTOKS.  69 

"Then   Criticism  the   Muse's  handmaid  proved, 
To  dress  her  charms  and  make  her  more  beloved: 
But   following   wits   from   that   intention   stray'd. 
Who  could  not  win  the  mistress,  woo'd  the  maid; 
Against   the  poets  their  own  arms   they  tum'd, 
Sure  to  hate  most  the  men  from  whom  they  leam'd. 
So  modern  'Pothecaries,  taught  the  art 
By  Doctors'  bills  to  play  the  Doctor's  part. 
Bold  in  the  practice  of  mistaken   rules. 
Prescribe,  apply,  and  call  their  masters  fools." 

The  origin  of  tlie  memorable  Dispensarian  Cam-i 
paign  between  the  College  of  Physicians  and  the 
Company  of  Apothecaries  is  a  story  that  can  be 
briefly  told.  The  younger  physicians,  impatient  at 
beholding  the  prosperity  and  influence  of  the  apothe-' 
caries,  and  the  older  ones  indignant  at  seeing  a  class 
of  men  they  despised  creeping  into  their  quarters  and 
craftily  laying  hold  of  a  portion  of  their  monopoly, 
concocted  a  scheme  to  reinstate  themselves  in  public 
favour.  Without  a  doubt  many  of  the  physicians  who 
countenanced  this  scheme  gave  it  their  support  from 
purely  charitable  motives;  but  it  cannot  be  questioned 
that  as  a  body  the  dispensarians  were  actuated  in 
their  humanitarian  exertions  by  a  desire  to  lower 
the  apothecaries, and  raise  themselves  in  the  e.yes  of  the 
world.  With  all  its  genuine  and  sterling  benevolence, 
the  medical  profession,  by  the  unworthy  and  silly 
conduct  of  its  obscure  members,  has  repeatedly  laid 
itself  open  to  the  charge  of  trading  on  its  reputation 
for  humanity.  In  .Smollett's  time,  as  his  novels  show, 
the  recognized  mode  emploj'ed  by  unknown  doctors 
to  pufl:  themselves  into  notoriety  and  practice,  was  ta 
get  up  little  hospitals  and  infirmaries,  and  advertise 
to  the  charitable  for  aid  in  the  good  task  of  ameliorat- 
ing the  condition  of  the  poor.  And  half  the  peddling 
little  charitable  institutions,  infirmaries,  dispensaries, 


70 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 


or  hospitals,  that  at  the  present  time  rob  the  rich  and 
do  harm  to  the  poor  in  every  quarter  of  London, 
originated  in  "the  friends"  of  young  physicians  and 
surgeons  conspiring  together  to  get  them  "the  po- 
sition of  bi'iug  attached  to  an  hospital  staff."  In  1687, 
the  physicians  at  a  college-meeting,  voted  "that  all 
members  of  the  College,  whether  Fellows,  Candidates, 
or  Licentiates,  should  give  their  advice  gratis  to  all 
their  sick  neighbouring  poor,  when  desired,  within 
the  city  of  London,  or  seven  miles  round." 

To  give  prescriptions  to  the  very  poor,  unaccom- 
panied with  the  means  of  getting  them  disp.-ised,  is 
of  little  use.  Sir  Astley  Cooper  used  to  see  in  the 
vicinity  of  his  residence  the  slips  of  paper,  marked 
with  his  pen,  which  it  was  his  wont  to  distribute 
gratuitously  to  indigent  applicants.  The  fact  was, 
the  poor  people,  finding  it  beyond  their  means  to  pay 
the  druggist  for  dispensing  Ihem,  threw  them  away  in 
disgust.  It  was  just  the  same  in  1687.  The  poor  folk 
carried  their  prescriptions  to  the  apothecaries,  to 
learn  that  the  trade  charge  for  dispensing  them  was 
beyond  their  means.  The  physicians  asserted  that  the 
demands  of  the  drug-venders  were  extortionate,  and 
were  not  reduced  to  meet  the  finances  of  the  appli- 
cants, to  the  end  that  the  undertakings  of  benevo- 
lence might  prove  abortive.  This  was  of  course  ab- 
surd. The  apothecaries  knew  their  own  interests  bet- 
ter than  so  to  oppose  a  system  which  at  least  rendered 
drug-consuming  fashionable  with  the  lower  orders. 
Perhaps  they  regarded  the  poor  as  their  peculiar  field 
of  practice,  and  felt  insulted  at  having  the  same 
humble  people — for  whom  they  had  pompously  pre- 
scribed and  put  up  boluses  at  two-pence  apiece— now 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  71 

entering  their  shops  with  papers  dictating  what  the 
two-penny  bolus  was  to  be  composed  of.  But  the 
charge  preferred  against  them  was  groundless.  In- 
deed, a  numerous  body  of  the  apothecaries  expressly 
offered  to  sell  medicines  ' '  to  the  poor  within  their  re- 
spective parishes,  at  such  rates  as  the  committee  of 
physicians  should  think  reasonable." 

But  this  would  not  suit  the  game  of  the  physicians. 
"A  pi'oposal  was  started  by  a  committee  of  the  Col- 
lege, that  the  College  should  furnish  the  medicines 
of  the  poor,  and  perfect  alone  that  charity  which  the 
apothecaries  refused  to  concur  in;  and  after  divers 
methods  inei-'ectually  tried,  and  much  time  wasted 
in  endeavouring  to  bring  the  Apothecaries  to  terms  of 
reason  in  relation  to  the  \)00i\  an  instrument  was 
subscribed  by  divers  charitably  disposed  members  of 
the  College,  now  iu  number  about  fifty,  wherein  they 
obliged  themselves  to  pay  ten  pounds  apiece  towards 
the  preparing  and  delivering  medicines  at  their  in- 
trinsic value."  Such  was  the  version  of  the  affair 
given  by  the  College  r.pologists.  The  plan  was  acted 
upon;  and  a  dispensary  v.-as  eventually  established 
(some  nine  years  after  the  vote  of  1687)  in  the  Col- 
lege of  Physicians,  Warwick  Lane,  where  medicines 
were  vended  to  the  poor  at  cost  price. 

This  measure  of  the  Colkge  was  impolitic  and  un- 
justifiable. It  was  unjust  to  that  important  division 
of  the  trade  who  were  ready  to  vend  the  medicines 
at  rates  to  be  fixed  by  the  College  authorities— for 
it  took  altogether  out  of  their  hands  the  small  amount 
of  profit  which  they,  as  dealers,  could  have  realized  on 
those  terms.  It  was  also  an  eminently  unmse  course. 
The  College  sank  to  the  level  of  the  Apothecaries' 


72  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

Hall,  becoming  an  emporium  for  the  sale  of  medi- 
cines. It  was  all  very  well  to  say  that  no  profit  was 
made  on  such  sale— the  censorious  world  would  not 
believe  it.  The  apothecaries  and  their  friends  denied 
that  such  was  the  fact,  and  avowed  that  the  benevo- 
lent dispensarians  were  bent  only  on  underselling 
and  ruining  them. 

Again,  the  movement  introduced  dissension  within 
the  walls  of  the  College.  Many  of  the  first  physicians, 
with  the  conservatism  of  success,  did  not  care  to  of- 
fend the  apothecaries,  who  were  continually  calling 
them  in,  and  paying  them  fees.  They  therefore  joined 
in  the  cry  against  the  dispensary.  The  profession 
was  split  up  into  dispensarians  and  anti-dispensar- 
ians.  The  apothecaries  combined  and  agreed  not  to 
recommend  the  dispensarians.  The  anti-dispensarians 
repaid  this  ill  service  by  refusing  to  meet  dispensar- 
ians in  consultation.  Sir  Thomas  Millington,  the 
president  of  the  College,  Edward  Hulse,  Hans  Sloane, 
John  Woodward,  Sir  Edmund  King,  and  Samuel 
Garth  were  amongst  the  latter.  Of  them  the  last- 
named  was  the  man  who  rendered  the  most  efficient 
service  to  his  party. 

Garth  is  perhaps  the  most  cherished  by  the  present 
generation  of  all  the  physicians  of  Pope's  time.  He 
was  a  Whig  without  rancour,  and  a  boii-vivant  with- 
out selfishness.  Full  of  jest  and  amiability,  he  did 
more  to  create  merriment  at  the  Kit-Kat  club  than 
either  Swift  or  Arbuthnot.  He  loved  wine  to  excess ; 
but  then  wine  loved  him  too,  ripening  and  warming 
his  wit,  and  leaving  no  sluggish  humour  behind.  His 
practice  was  a  good  one,  but  his  numerous  patients 
prized  his  ion-mots  moi-e  than  his  prescriptions.    His 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  73 

enemies  averred  that  he  was  not  only  an  epicure,  but 
a  profligate  voluptuary  and  an  infidel.  Pope,  how- 
ever, wrote  of  him  after  his  death, ' '  If  ever  there  was 
a  good  Christian,  without  knowing  himself  to  be  so, 
it  was  Dr.  Garth."  Pope  had  honoured  him  when 
alive  by  dedicating  his  second  pastoral  to  him. 

"Accept,  O  Garth,  the  muse's  early  lays. 
That  adds  this  wreath  of  ivy  to  thy  bays; 
Hear  what  from  love  unpractised  hearts  endure, 
From  love,  the  sole  disease  thou  canst  not  cure." 

A  good  picture  of  Garth  the  politician  is  found  in 
the  "Journal  to  Stella."  "London,  Nov.  17,  1711," 
Avrites  Swift— "This  is  Queen  Elizabeth's  birthday, 
usually  kept  in  this  town  by  apprentices,  &c. ;  but  the 
Whigs  designed  a  mighty  procession  by  midnight,  and 
had  laid  out  a  thousand  pounds  to  dress  up  the  pope, 
devil,  cardinals,  Sacheverel,  &c.,  and  carry  them  with 
torches  about  and  burn  them.  They  did  it  by  contri- 
bution. Garth  gave  five  guineas;  Dr.  Garth  I  mean, 
if  ever  you  heard  of  him.  But  they  were  seized  last 
night  by  order  from  the  Secretary.  .  .  .  Tho 
figures  are  now  at  the  Secretary 's  OfSce  at  Whitehall. 
I  design  to  see  them  if  I  can." 

A  Whig,  but  the  friend  of  Tories,  Garth  cordially 
disliked  Sir  Richard  Blackmore,  a  member  of  his  own 
profession  and  political  party.  Blackmore  was  an 
anti-dispensarian,  a  bad  poet,  and  a  pure  and  rigid 
moralist.  Naturally  Garth  abominated  him,  and 
sneered  at  him  for  his  pomposity  and  bad  scholarship. 
It  is  to  be  regretted  that  Garth,  with  the  vulgarity  of 
the  age,  twitted  him  with  his  early  poverty,  and  with 
having  been— a  schoolmaster.  To  ridicule  his  enemy 
Garth  composed  the  following  verses :— . 


74         a  book  about  doctors. 

"to  the  merry  poetaster,  at  Sadler's 

}IALL,   IN    CIIEAPSIDE. 

"Unwieldy  pedant,  let  thy  awkward  muse 
With  censures  praise,  with  flatteries  abuse; 
To  lash,  and  not  be  felt,  in  thee  's  an  art. 
That  ne'er  mad'st  any  but  thy  school-boys  smart. 
Then  be  advised  and  scribble  not  again — 
Thou  'rt  fashion'd  for  a  flail  and  not  a  pen. 

If  B I's   immortal  wit  thou  would'st  decry, 

Pretend  'tis  he  that  wrote  thy  poetry. 

Thy  feeble  satire  ne'er  can   do  him  wrong — 

Thy  poems  and  thy  patients  live  not  long." 

Garth's  death,  as  described  by  William  Ayre,  was 
characteristic.  He  was  soon  tired  of  an  invalid's  suf- 
fering and  helplessness,  the  ennui  and  boredom  of  the 
sick-room  afflicting  him  more  than  the  bodily  pain. 
"Gentlemen,"  said  he  to  the  crowd  of  weeping  friends 
who  stood  round  his  bed,  "I  wish  the  ceremony  of 
death  was  over."  And  so,  sinking  lower  in  the  bed, 
he  died  without  a  struggle.  He  had  previously,  on 
being  informed  that  his  end  was  approaching,  ex- 
pressed pleasure  at  the  intelligence,  because  he  was 
tired  of  having  his  shoes  pulled  off  and  on.  The  man- 
ner of  Garth's  e.xit  reminds  one  of  the  death  of  Rab- 
elais, also  a  physician.  The  presence  of  officious 
friends  troubled  him ;  and  when  he  saw  his  doctors 
consulting  together,  he  raised  his  head  from  his  pil- 
low and  said  with  a  smile,  "Dear  gentlemen,  let  me 
die  a  natural  death."  After  he  had  received  extreme 
unction,  a  friend  approached  him,  and  asked  him  how 
he  did.  "I  am  going  on  my  journey,"  was  the  an- 
swer—"they  have  greased  my  boots  already." 

Garth  has,  apart  from  his  literary  productions,  one 
great  claim  on  posterity.  To  him  Dryden  owed  hon- 
ourable interment.  When  the  great  poet  died,  Garth 
caused  his  body  to  be  conveyed  to  the  College  of  Phy- 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  75 

sicians,  and  started  a  public  subscription  to  defray 
the  expenses  of  the  funeral.  He  pronounced  an  ora- 
tion over  the  deceased  at  the  College  in  Warwick 
LanCj  and  then  accompanied  it  to  Westminster  Ab- 
bey. 

Of  the  stories  preserved  of  Garth's  social  humour 
some  are  exquisitely  droll.  Writing  a  letter  at  a  cof- 
fee-house, he  found  himself  overlooked  by  a  curious 
Irishman,  who  was  impudently  reading  every  word 
of  the  epistle.  Garth  took  no  notice  of  the  imperti- 
nence, until  he  had  finished  and  signed  the  body  of 
the  letter,  when  he  added  a  postscript,  of  unques- 
tionable legibility:  "I  would  write  you  more  by  thig 
post,  but  there's  a  d tall  impudent  Irishman  look- 
ing over  my  shoulder  all  the  time." 

"What  do  you  mean,  sir?"  roared  the  Irishman  in 
a  fury.    ' '  Do  you  think  I  looked  over  your  letter  ? ' ' 

"Sir,"  replied  the  physician,  "I  never  once  opened 
my  lips  to  you. ' ' 

"Ay,  but  you  have  put  it  down,  for  all  that." 

"  'Tis  impossible,  sir,  that  you  should  know  that, 
for  you  have  never  once  looked  over  my  letter. ' ' 

Stumbling  into  a  Presbyterian  church  one  Sun- 
day, for  pastime,  he  found  a  pathetic  preacher  shed- 
ding tears  over  the  iniquity  of  the  earth. 

"What  makes  the  man  greet?"  asked  Garth  of  a 
bystander. 

"By  my  faith,"  was  the  answer,  "and  you  too 
would  greet  if  you  were  in  his  place  and  had  as  little 
to  say." 

"Come  along,  my  dear  fellow,"  responded  Garth 
to  his  new  acquaintance,  "and  dine  with  me.  You  are 
too  good  a  fellow  to  be  here. ' ' 


76  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

At  the  Kit-Kat  he  once  stayed  to  drink  long  after 
he  had  said  that  he  must  be  off  to  see  his  patients.  Sir 
Richard,  more  humane  than  the  physician,  or  possi- 
bly, like  the  rest  of  the  world,  not  disinclined  to  be 
virtuous  at  another's  expense,  observed,  "Really, 
Garth,  you  ought  to  have  no  more  wine,  but  be  off  to, 
see  those  poor  devils." 

"It's  no  great  matter,"  Garth  replied,  "whether  I 
see  them  to-night  or  not,  for  nine  of  them  have  such 
bad  constitutions,  that  all  the  physicians  in  the  world 
can't  save  them;  and  the  other  six  have  such  good 
constitutions,  that  all  the  physicians  in  the  world  can't 
kill  them." 

Born  of  a  respectable  north-country  family.  Garth 
was  educated  first  at  a  provincial  school,  and  then  at 
Cambridge.  lie  was  admitted  a  Fellow  of  the  Col- 
lege of  Physicians  on  June  26,  1692,  just  when  the 
quarrel  of  the  Physicians  and  Apothecaries  was  wax- 
ing to  its  hottest,  i.  c.  between  the  College  edict  of 
1687,  ordaining  gratuitous  advice,  and  the  creation 
of  the  dispensary  in  1696.  As  a  young  man  he  saw 
that  his  right  place  was  with  the  dispensarians— and 
he  took  it.  For  a  time  his  great  poem,  "The  Dispen- 
sary," covered  the  apothecaries  and  anti-dispensar- 
ians  with  ridicule.  It  rapidly  passed  through  numer- 
ous editions— in  each  of  which,  as  was  elegantly  ob- 
served, the  world  lost  and  gained  much.  To  say  that 
of  all  the  books,  pamphlets,  and  broad-sheets  thrown 
out  by  the  combatants  on  both  sides,  it  is  by  far  the 
one  of  the  greatest  merit,  would  be  scant  justice,  when 
it  might  almost  be  said  that  it  is  the  only  one  of  them 
that  can  now  be  read  by  a  gentleman  without  a  sense 
of  annoyance  and  disgust.    There  is  no  point  of  view 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  77 

from  which  the  medical  profession  appears  in  a  more 
humiliating  and  contemptible  light  than  that  which 
the  literature  of  this  memorable  squabble  presents  to 
the  student.  Charges  of  ignorance,  dishonesty,  and 
extortion  were  preferred  on  both  sides;  and  the  dis- 
pensarian  physicians  did  not  hesitate  to  taunt  their 
brethren  of  the  opposite  camp  with  playing  corruptly 
into  the  hands  of  the  apothecaries — prescribing  enor- 
mous and  unnecessary  quantities  of  medicine,  so  that 
the  drug-venders  might  make  heavy  bills,  and,  as  a 
consequence,  recommend  in  all  directions  such  com- 
placent superiors  to  be  called  in.  Garth's  poem,  un- 
fair and  violent  though  it  is,  seldom  offends  against 
decency.  As  a  work  of  art  it  cannot  be  ranked  high, 
and  is  now  deservedly  forgotten,  although  it  has  many 
good  lines,  and  some  felicitous  satire.  Johnson  right- 
ly pointed  to  the  secret  of  its  success,  though  he  took 
a  one-sided  and  unjust  view  of  the  dissensions  which 
called  it  forth.  "The  poem,"  observes  the  biographer, 
"as  its  subject  was  present  and  popular,  co-operated 
with  passions  and  prejudices  then  prevalent;  and, 
with  such  auxiliaries  to  its  intrinsic  merit,  was  uni- 
versally and  liberally  applauded.  It  was  on  the  side 
of  charity  against  the  intrigues  of  interest,  and  of  reg- 
ular learning  against  licentious  usurpation  of  medical 
authority. ' ' 

Sir  Samuel  Garth  (knighted  by  the  sword  of  IMarl." 
borough)  died  January  18, 1718-19,  and  was  buried  at 
Harrow-on-the-Hill. 

But  he  lived  to  see  the  apothecaries  gradually 
emancipate  themselves  from  the  ignominious  regula- 
tions to  which  they  consented,  when  their  vocation 
was  first  separated  from  the  grocery  trade.     Four 


78  A   BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

years  after  his  death  they  obtained  legal  acknowledg- 
ment of  their  right  to  dispense  and  sell  medicines 
without  the  prescription  of  a  physician ;  and  six  years 
later  the  law  again  decided  in  their  favour,  with  re- 
gard to  the  physicians'  right  of  examining  and  con- 
demning their  drugs.  In  1721,  Mr.  Rose,  an  apothe- 
cary, on  being  prosecuted  by  the  College  for  prescrib- 
ing as  well  as  compounding  medicines,  carried  the 
matter  into  the  House  of  Lords,  and  obtained  a  fa- 
vourable decision.  And  from  1727,  in  which  year  Mr. 
Goodwin,  an  apothecary,  obtained  in  a  court  of  law  a 
considerable  sum  for  an  illegal  seizure  of  his  wares 
(by  Drs.  Arbuthnot,  Bale,  and  Levit),  the  physicians 
may  be  said  to  have  discontinued  to  exercise  their 
privileges  of  inspection. 

Arbuthnot  did  not  exceed  Garth  in  love  to  the 
apothecaries.  His  contempt  for,  and  dislike  of,  the 
fraternity,  inspired  him  to  write  his  "Essay  on  an 
Apothecary."  He  thinks  it  a  pity  that,  to  prevent 
the  country  from  being  overrun  with  apothecaries, 
it  should  not  be  allowed  to  anatomize  them,  for  the 
improvement  of  natural  knowledge.  He  ridicules 
them  for  pedantically  "dressing  all  their  discourse 
in  the  language  of  the  Faculty." 

"At  meals,"  he  says,  "they  distributed  their  wine 
with  a  little  hnnph,  dissected  a  widgeon,  cohobated 
their  pease-porridge,  and  amalgamated  a  custard.  A 
morsel  of  beef  was  a  bolus;  a  grillard  was  sacrificed; 
eating  was  mastication  and  deglutition;  a  dish  of 
steaks  was  a  compound  of  many  powerful  ingredients ; 
and  a  plate  of  soup  was  a  very  exalted  preparation. 
In  dress,  a  suit  of  eloaths  was  a  system,  a  loophole 
a  valve,  and 'a  surtout  an  integument.    Cloth  was  a 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  79 

texture  of  fibres  spread  into  a  drab  or  kersey;  a  small 
rent  in  it  was  cutaneous;  a  thread  was  a  filament; 
and  the  waistband  of  the  breeches  the  peritoneum." 

The  superior  branch  of  the  Faculty  invited  in  many 
ways  the  same  satire.  Indeed,  pedantry  was  the  preva^ 
lent  fault  of  the  manners  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
The  physician,  the  divine,  the  lawyer,  the  parliament- 
man,  the  country  gentleman,  the  author  by  profession 
—all  had  peculiarities  of  style,  costume,  speech,  or  in^ 
tonation,  by  which  they  were  well  pleased  they  should 
be  recognised.  In  one  respect  this  was  well ;  men  were 
proud  of  being  what  they  were,  and  desired  to  be 
known  as  belonging  to  their  respective  vocations.  They 
had  no  anxiety  to  be  free  from  trade-marks.  The 
barrister's  smirk,  the  physician's  unctuous  smiles,  the 
pedagogue 's  frown,  did  not  originate  in  a  mean  desire 
to  be  taken  for  something  of  higher  mark  and  es- 
teem than  they  really  were. 

From  the  time  when  Bulleyn  called  him  the  phy- 
sician's cook,  down  to  the  present  generation,  the 
pure  apothecary  is  found  holding  a  very  subordinate 
position.  His  business  is  to  do  unpleasant  drudgery 
that  a  gentleman  finds  it  unpleasant  to  perform,  but 
which  cannot  be  left  to  the  hands  of  a  nurse.  The 
questions  to  be  considered  previous  to  becoming  an 
apprentice  to  an  apothecary,  put  in  Chemberlaine's 
"Tyrocinium  Medicum,"  well  describe  the  state  of 
the  apothecary's  pupil.  "Can  you  bear  the  thoughts 
of  being  obliged  to  get  up  out  of  your  warm  bed,  on 
a  cold  winter's  night,  or  rather  morning,  to  make  up 
medicines  which  your  employer,  just  arrived  through 
frost  and  snow,  prescribes  for  a  patient  taken  sud- 
denly or  dangerously  iU?— or,  supposing  that  your 


80  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

master  is  not  in  sufficient  business  to  keep  a  boy  to  take 
out  medicines,  can  you  make  up  your  mind  to  think 
it  no  hardship  to  take  them  to  the  patient  after  you 
have  made  them  up?"  &c.,  &c.  When  such  services 
were  expected  from  pupils  studying  for  admittance! 
to  the  craft,  of  course  boys  with  ample  means,  or 
prospects  elsewhere,  did  not  as  a  rule  desire  to  become 
apothecaries. 

Within  the  last  fifty  years  changes  have  been  affect- 
ed in  various  departments  of  the  medical  profession, 
that  have  rendered  the  apothecary  a  feature  of  the 
past,  and  transferred  his  old  functions  to  a  new  la- 
bourer. Prior  to  1788,  it  is  stated  on  authority  there 
were  not  in  all  London  more  than  half-a-dozen  drug- 
gists who  dispensed  medicines  from  physicians'  pre- 
scriptions. Before  that  time,  the  apothecaries— the 
members  of  the  Apothecaries'  Company— were  al- 
most the  sole  compounders  and  preparers  of  dinigs. 
At  the  present  time  it  is  exceptional  for  an  apothecary 
to  put  up  prescriptions,  imless  he  is  acting  as  the 
family  or  ordinary  medical  attendant  to  the  patient 
prescribed  for.  As  a  young  man,  indeed,  he  some- 
times condescends  to  keep  an  open  shop ;  but  as  soon 
as  he  can  get  on  without  "counter"  business,  he 
leavc.3  the  commercial  part  of  his  occupation  to  the 
druggist,as  beneath  his  dignity.  The  dispensing  chem- 
ists and  druggists,  whose  shops,  flashing  with  blue 
bottles  (last  remnant  of  empiric  charlatanry),  bright- 
en our  street  corners  and  scare  our  horses  at  night, 
are  the  apothecaries  of  the  last  century.  The  apothe- 
cary himself— that  is,  the  member  of  the  Company— 
is  hardly  ever  found  as  an  apothecary  pur  et  simple. 
He  enrolls  himself  at  "the  hall"  for  the  sake  of  being 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  81 

able  to  sue  ungrateful  patients  for  money  due  to  him. 
But  in  the  great  majority  of  eases  he  is  also  a  Fellow 
or  Member  of  the  College  of  Surgeons,  and  acts  as  a 
general  practitioner;  that  is,  he  does  anything  and 
everything— prescribes  and  dispenses  his  prescrip- 
tions; is  at  the  same  time  physician,  surgeon,  ac- 
coucheur, and  dentist.  Physic  and  surgery  were  di- 
vided at  a  very  early  date  in  theory,  but  in  prac- 
tice they  were  combined  by  eminent  physicians  till  a 
comparatively  recent  period.  And  yet  later  the  phy- 
sician performed  the  functions  of  the  apothecary,  just 
as  the  apothecary  presumed  to  discharge  the  offices 
of  physician.  It  was  not  derogatory  to  the  dignity 
of  a  leading  physician,  in  the  reign  of  Charles  the 
Second,  to  keep  a  shop,  and  advertise  the  wares  vend- 
ed in  it,  announcing  in  the  same  manner  their  prices. 
Dr.  Mead  realized  large  sums  by  the  sale  of  worthless 
nostrums.  And  only  a  few  years  since,  a  distin- 
guished Cambridge  physician,  retaining  as  an  octo- 
genarian the  popularity  he  had  achieved  as  a  young 
man,  in  one  of  our  eastern  counties,  used  to  sell  his 
"gout  tincture"— a  secret  specific  against  gout— at 
so  many  shillings  per  bottle.  In  many  respects  the 
general  practitioner  of  this  century  would  consider 
his  professional  character  compromised  if  he  adopted 
the  customs  generally  in  vogue  amongst  the  physicians 
of  the  last. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

QUACKS. 

"So  then  the  subject  being  so  variable,  hath  made  the  art  by 
consequence  more  conjectural;  an  art  being  conjectural  hath 
made  so  much  the  more  place  to  be  left  for  imposture.  For 
almost  all  other  arts  and  sciences  are  judged  by  acts  or  mas- 
terpieces, as  I  may  term  them,  and  not  by  the  successes  and 
events.  The  lawyer  is  judged  by  the  virtue  of  his  pleading, 
and  not  by  the  issue  of  the  cause.  The  master  of  the  ship 
is  judged  by  the  directing  his  course  aright,  and  not  by  the 
fortune  of  the  voyage.  But  the  physician,  and  perhaps  the 
politician,  hath  no  particular  acts  demonstrative  of  his 
ability,  but  is  judged  most  by  the  event;  which  is  ever  but 
as  it  is  taken :  for  who  can  tell,  if  a  patient  die  or  recover, 
or  if  a  state  be  preserved  or  ruined,  whether  it  be  art  or 
accident?  and  therefore  many  times  the  impostor  is  prized, 
and  the  man  of  virtue  taxed.  Nay,  we  see  the  weakness  and 
credulity  of  men  is  such,  as  they  will  often  prefer  a  mounte- 
bank or  li'itch  before  a  learned  physician." — Lord  Bacon's 
"Advancement  of  Learning." 

The  history  of  quackery,  if  it  were  written  on  a 

scale  that  should  include  the  entire  number  of  those 

frauds  which  may  be  generally  classed  under  the  head 

of  humbug,  would  be  the  history  of  the  human  race 

in  all  ages  and  climes.     Neither  the  benefactors  nor 

the  enemies  of  mankind  would  escape  mention;  and 

a  sear(?hing  scrutiny  would  show  that  dishonesty  has 

played  as  important,  though  not  as  manifest,  a  part 

in  the  operations  of  benevolence,  as  in  the  achieve- 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  83 

ments  of  the  cle\'il.  But  a  more  confined  use  of  the 
word  must  satisfy  us  on  the  present  occasion.  We 
are  not  ahout  to  enter  on  a  philosophic  inquiry  into 
the  causes  that  contributed  to  the  success  of  Mahom- 
et and  Cromwell,  but  only  to  chronicle  a  few  of  the 
most  humorous  facts  connected  with  the  predecessors 
of  Dr.  Townsend  and  Mr.  Morrison. 

In  the  success  that  has  in  every  century  attended 
the  rascally  enterprises  of  pretenders  to  the  art  of 
medicine,  is  found  a  touching  evidence  of  the  sorrow, 
credulity,  and  ignorance  of  the  generations  that  have 
passed,  or  are  passing,  to  the  silent  home  where  the 
pain  and  joj',  the  simplicity  and  cunning,  of  this 
world  are  alike  of  insignificance.  The  hope  that  to 
the  last  lurks  in  the  breast  of  the  veriest  wretch  un- 
der heaven's  canopy,  whether  his  trials  come  from 
broken  health,  or  an  empty  pocket,  or  wronged  affec- 
tion, speaks  aloud  in  saddest  tones,  as  one  thinks  of 
the  multitudes  who,  worn  with  bodily  malady  and 
spiritual  dejection,  ignorant  of  the  source  of  their 
sufferings,  but  thirsting  for  relief  from  them,  have 
gone  from  charlatan  to  charlatan,  giving  hoarded 
money  in  exchange  for  charms,  cramp-rings,  warm- 
ing-stones, elixirs,  and  trochees,  warranted  to  cure 
every  ill  that  flesh  is  heir  to.  The  scene,  from  another 
point  of  view,  is  more  droll,  but  scarcely  less  mourn- 
ful. Look  away  for  a  few  seconds  from  the  throng 
of  miserable  objects  who  press  round  the  empiric's 
stage ;  wipe  out  for  a  brief  while  the  memory  of  their 
woes,  and  regard  the  style  and  arts  of  the  practi- 
tioner who,  with  a  trunk  full  of  nostrums,  bids  dis- 
ease to  vanish,  and  death  to  retire  from  the  scenes  of 
his  triumph.   There  he  stands — a  lean,  fantastic  man. 


84  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

voluble  of  tonnrue,  empty-headed,  full  of  loud  words 
and  menaces,  prating  about  kings  and  princes  who 
have  taken  him  by  the  hand  and  kissed  him  in  grati- 
tude for  his  benefits  showered  upon  them— dauntless, 
greedy,  and  so  steeped  in  falsehood  that  his  crazy- 
tainted  brain  half  believes  the  lies  that  flow  from  his 
glib  tongue.  Are  there  no  such  men  amongst  us  now 
—not  standing  on  carts  at  the  street-corners,  and  sell- 
ing their  wares  to  a  dingy  rabble,  but  having  their 
seats  of  exchange  in  honoured  places,  and  vending 
their  prescriptions  to  crowds  of  wealthy  clients? 

In  the  feudal  ages  medicine  and  quackery  were 
the  same,  as  far  as  any  principles  of  science  are  con- 
cerned. The  only  difference  between  the  physician 
and  the  charlatan  vras,  that  the  former  was  a  fool 
and  the  latter  a  rogue.  Men  did  not  meddle  much 
with  the  healing  art.  A  few  clerks  devoted  them- 
selves to  it,  and  in  the  exercise  of  their  spiritual  and 
medical  functions  discovered  how  to  get  two  fleeces 
from  a  sheep  at  one  shearing ;  but  the  care  of  the  sick 
was  for  the  most  part  left  to  the  women,  who  then,  as 
in  every  other  period  of  the  world's  history,  prided 
themselves  on  their  medical  cunning,  and,  with  the 
exception  of  intrigue,  preferred  attending  on  the  sick 
to  any  other  occupation.  From  the  time  of  the  Ref- 
ormation, however,  the  number  of  lady  doctors  rap- 
idly diminished.  The  fair  sex  gradually  relinquished 
the  ground  they  had  so  long  occupied,  to  men,  who, 
had  the  monastic  institutions  continued  to  exist,  would 
have  assumed  the  priestly  garb  and  passed  their  days 
in  sloth.  Quackery  was  at  length  fairly  taken  out 
of  the  hands  of  women  and  the  shelter  of  domestic 
life,  and  was  practised,  not  for  love,  and  in  a  super- 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  85 

stitious  belief  in  its  efficacy,  but  for  money,  and  fre- 
quently with  a  perfect  knowledge  of  its  worthlessness 
as  a  remedial  system. 

As  soon  as  the  printing-press  had  become  an  insti- 
tution of  the  country,  and  there  existed  a  considerable 
proportion  of  the  community  capable  of  x-eading,  the 
empirics  seized  hold  of  Caxton's  invention,  and  made 
it  subservient  to  their  honourable  ends.  The  adver- 
tising system  was  had  recourse  to  in  London,  during 
the  Stuart  era,  scarcely  less  than  it  is  now.  Hand- 
bills were  distributed  in  aU  directions  by  half-starved 
wretches,  whose  withered  forms  and  pallid  cheeks 
were  of  themselves  a  sufficient  disproof  of  the  asser- 
tions of  their  employers. 

The  costume,  language,  style,  and  artifices  of  the 
pretenders  to  physic  in  the  seventeenth  century  were 
doubtless  copied  from  models  of  long  standing,  and 
differed  little  in  essentials  from  those  of  their  prede- 
cessors. Professions  retain  their  characteristics  with 
singular  obstinacy.  The  doctor  of  Charles  the  Sec- 
ond's London  transmitted  all  his  most  salient  features 
to  the  quack  of  the  Regency. 

Cotgrave,  in  his  "Treasury  of  Wit  and  Language," 
published  1655,  thus  paints  the  poor  physician  of  his 
time:  — 

"My  name  is  Pulsefeel,  a  poor  Doctor  of  Physick, 
That  does  wear  three  pile  velvet  in  his  hat, 
Has  paid  a  quarter's  rent  of  his  house  before-hand, 
And  (simple  as  he  stands  here)  was  made  doctor  beyond  sea. 
I  vow,  as  I  am  right  worshipful,  the  taking 
Of  my  degree  cost  me  twelve  French  crowns,  and 
Thirty-five  pounds  of  butter  in  Upper  Germany. 
I   can  make  your  beauty,  and  preserve  it, 
Rectifie  your  body  and  maintaine  it, 
Clarifie  your  blood,  surfle  your  cheeks,  perfume 
Your  skin,  tinct  your  hair,  enliven  your  eye, 


86  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

Heighten  your  appetite;  and  as  for  Jellies, 

Dentifrizcs,  Dyets,  Minerals,  Fricasses, 

Pomatums.  Fumes,  Italia  masks  to  sleep  in, 

Either  to  moisten  or  dry  the  superficies.  Faugh !    Galen 

Was  a  goose,  and  Paracelsus  a  Patch, 

To  Doctor  Pulsefeel." 

This  picture  would  serve  for  the  portrait  of  Dr. 
Pulsefeel  in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth,  as  well  aa 
the  seventeenth  century.  How  it  calls  to  mind  the 
image  of  Oliver  Goldsmith,  when,  with  a  smattering 
of  medical  knowledge,  a  cane,  and  a  dubious  diploma, 
he  tried  to  pick  out  of  the  miseries  and  ignorance  of 
his  fellow-creatures  the  means  of  keeping  body  and 
soul  together!  He  too,  poet  and  scholar  thougii  he 
was,  would  have  sold  a  pot  of  rouge  to  a  faded  beauty, 
or  a  bottle  of  hair-dye,  or  a  nostrum  warranted  to 
cure  the  bite  of  a  mad  dog. 

A  more  accurate  picture,  however,  of  the  charlatan, 
is  to  be  found  in  "The  Quack's  Academy;  or,  The 
Dvmce's  Directory,"  published  in  1678,  of  which  the 
following  is  a  portion  :— 

"However,  in  the  second  place,  to  support  this 
title,  there  are  several  things  very  convenient:  of 
which  some  are  external  accoutrements,  others  inter- 
nal qualifications. 

"Your  outward  requisites  are  a  decent  black  suit, 
and  (if  your  credit  will  stretch  so  far  in  Long  Lane) 
a  plush  jacket;  not  a  pin  the  worse  though  thread- 
bare as  a  tailor's  cloak— it  shows  the  more  reverend 
antiquity. 

"Secondly,  like  ilercury,  you  must  always  carry  a 
eaduceus  or  conjuring  japan  in  your  hand,  capt  with 
a  civet-box ;  with  which  you  must  walk  with  Spanish 
gravity,  as  in  deep  contemplation  upon  an  arbitra- 
ment between  life  and  death. 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  87 

"Thirdly,  a  convenient  lodging,  not  forgetting  a 
hatch  at  the  door;  a  chamber  hung  with  Dutch  pic- 
tures, or  looking-glasses,  belittered  with  empty  bot- 
tles, gallipots,  and  vials  filled  with  tapdroppings,  or 
fair  water,  coloured  with  saunders.  Any  sexton  will 
furnish  your  Avindow  with  a  skull,  in  hope  of  your 
custom;  over  wliich  hang  up  the  skeleton  of  a  mon- 
key, to  proclaim  your  skill  in  anatomy. 

"Fourthly,  let  your  table  be  never  without  some 
old  musty  Greek  or  Arabick  author,  and  the  4th  book 
of  Cornelius  Agrippa's  'Occult  Philosophy,'  wide 
open  to  amuse  spectators;  with  half-a-dozen  of  gilt 
shillings,  as  so  many  guineas  received  that  morning 
for  fees. 

"Fifthly,  fail  not  to  oblige  neighbouring  ale-houses, 
to  recommend  you  to  inquirers ;  and  hold  correspond- 
ence with  all  the  nurses  and  midwives  near  you,  to 
applaud  your  skill  at  gossippings." 

The  directions  go  on  to  advise  loquacity  and  impu- 
dence, qualities  which  quacks  of  all  times  and  kinds 
have  found  most  useful.  But  in  cases  where  the  prac- 
titioner has  an  impediment  in  his  speech,  or  cannot 
by  training  render  himself  glib  of  utterance,  he  is 
advised  to  persevere  in  a  habit  of  mysterious  silence, 
rendered  impressive  by  grave  nods  of  the  head. 

When  Dr.  Pulsefeel  was  tired  of  London,  or  felt  a 
want  of  country  air,  he  concentrated  his  powers  on 
the  pleasant  occupation  of  fleecing  rustic  simplici- 
ty. For  his  journeys  into  the  provinces  he  provided 
himself  with  a  stout  and  fast-trotting  hack— stout, 
that  it  might  bear  without  fatigue  weighty  parcels  of 
medicinal  composition ;  and  fleet  of  foot,  so  that  if  an 
ungrateful  rabble  should  commit  the  indecorum  of 


88  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

stoning  their  benefactor  as  an  impostor  (a  mishap 
that  would  occasionally  occur),  escape  might  be  ef- 
fected from  the  infatuated  and  excited  populace.  In 
his  circuit  the  doctor  took  in  all  the  fairs,  markets, 
wakes,  and  public  festivals ;  not,  however,  disdaining 
to  stop  an  entire  week,  or  even  month,  at  an  assize 
town,  where  he  found  the  sick  anxious  to  benefit  by 
his  wisdom. 

His  plan  of  making  acquaintance  with  a  new  place 
was  to  ride  boldly  into  the  thickest  crowd  of  a  fair  or 
market,  with  as  much  speed  as  he  could  make  without 
imperilling  the  lives  of  by-standers;  and  then,  when 
he  had  checked  his  steed,  inform  all  who  listened  that 
he  had  come  straight  from  the  Duke  of  Bohemia,  or 
the  most  Serene  Emperor  of  Wallachia,  out  of  a  de- 
sire to  do  good  to  his  fellow-creatures.  He  was  bom 
in  that  very  town,— yes,  that  very  town  in  which  he 
then  was  speaking,  and  had  left  it  when  an  orphan 
child  of  eight  years  of  age,  to  seek  his  fortune  in  the 
world.  He  had  found  his  way  to  London,  and  been 
crimped  on  board  a  vessel  bound  for  Morocco,  and  so 
had  been  carried  off  to  foreign  parts.  His  adven- 
tures had  been  wonderful.  He  had  \nsited  the  Sultan 
and  the  Great  Mogul.  There  was  not  a  part  of  the 
Indies  with  which  he  was  not  familiar.  If  any  one 
doubted  him,  let  his  face  be  regarded,  and  his  bronze 
complexion  bear  witness  of  the  scorching  suns  he  had 
endured.  He  had  cured  hundreds— ay,  thousands— 
of  emperors,  kings,  queens,  princes,  margravines,' 
grand  duchesses,  and  generalissimos,  of  their  diseases. 
He  had  a  powder  which  would  stay  the  palsy,  jaun- 
dice, hot  fever,  and  cramps.  It  was  expensive;  but 
that  he  couldn't  help,  for  it  was  made  of  pearls,  and 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  89 

the  dried  leaves  of  violets  brought  from  the  very  mid- 
dle of  Tartary ;  still  he  could  sell  a  packet  of  the  med- 
icine for  a  crown— a  sum  which  would  just  pay  him 
back  his  outlaid  money,  and  leave  him  no  profit.  But 
he  didn't  want  to  make  money  of  them.  He  was  their 
fellow-townsman;  and  in  order  to  find  them  out  and 
cure  them  he  had  refused  offers  of  wealth  from  the 
king  of  Mesopotamia,  who  wanted  him  to  accept  a  for- 
tune of  a  thousand  gold  pieces  a  month,  tarry  with 
the  Mesopotamians,  and  keep  them  out  of  Death's 
clutches.  Sometimes  this  harangue  was  made  from, 
the  back  of  a  horse ;  sometimes  from  a  rude  hustings, 
from  which  he  was  called  mou7itebank.  He  sold  all 
kinds  of  medicaments:  dyes  for  the  hair,  washes  for 
the  complexion,  lotions  to  keep  young  men  youthful ; 
rings  which,  when  worn  on  the  fore-finger  of  the 
right  hand,  should  make  a  chosen  favourite  desperate-- 
ly  in  love  with  the  wearer,  and  when  worn  on  the 
same  finger  of  the  left  hand,  should  drive  the  said 
favourite  to  commit  suicide.  Nothing  could  surpass 
the  impudence  of  the  fellow's  lies,  save  the  admiration 
with  which  his  credulous  auditors  swallowed  his  as- 
sertions. There  they  stood,— stout  yeomen,  drunken 
squires,  merry  peasant  girls,  gawky  hinds,  gabbling 
dames,  deeming  themselves  in  luck's  way  to  have  lived 
to  see  such  a  miracle  of  learning.  Possibly  a  young 
student  home  from  Oxford,  with  the  rashness  of  in- 
experience, would  smile  scornfully,  and  in  a  loud 
voice  designate  the  pretender  a  quack— a  quacksalvar 
(kwabzalver),  from  the  liniment  he  vended  for  the 
cure  of  wens.  But  such  an  interruption,  in  ninety 
and  nine  cases  out  of  every  hundred,  was  condemned 
by  the  orthodox  friends  of  the  young  student,  and  he 


90  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

was  warned  that  he  would  come  to  no  j^ood  if  he  went 
on  as  he  had  begun— a  contemptuous  unbeliever,  and 
a  mocker  of  wise  men. 

The  author  of  the  "Discourse  de  I'Origine  des 
Moeurs,  Fraudes,  et  Impostures  des  Ciarlatans,  avec 
leur  Decouverte,  Paris,  1662,"  says,  "Premierement, 
par  ce  mot  de  Ciarlatans,  j'entens  eeux  que  les  Ital- 
iens  appellent  Saltambaci,  basteleurs,  bouffons,  ven- 
deurs  de  bagatelles,  et  generalement  toute  autre  per- 
sonne,  laquelle  en  place  publique  montee  en  banc,  a 
terre,  ou  a  cheval,  vend  medeeines,  baumes,  huilles  ou 
poudres,  composees  pour  guerir  quelque  infirmite. 
louant  et  exaltant  sa  drogue,  avec  artifice,  et  mille 
faux  sermens,  en  racontant  mille  et  mille  merveilles. 

Mais  c'est  chose  plaisante  de  voir  I'artifice  dont  se 
servent  ces  medecins  de  banc  pour  vendre  leur  drogue, 
quand  avec  mille  faux  sermens  ils  aSirment  d 'avoir 
appris  leur  secret  du  roi  de  Dannemarc,  au  d'tin 
prince  de  Transilvanie." 

The  great  quack  of  Charles  the  Second's  London 
was  Dr.  Thomas  Saffold.  This  man  (who  was  origin^ 
ally  a  weaver)  professed  to  cure  every  disease  of  the 
human  body,  and  also  to  foretell  the  destinies  of  his 
patients.  Along  Cheapside,  Fleet-street,  and  the 
Strand,  even  down  to  the  sacred  precincts  of  White- 
hall and  St.  James's,  he  stationed  bill-distributors, 
who  showered  prose  and  poetry  on  the  passers-by — 
just  as  the  agents  (possibly  the  poets)  of  the  Messrs. 
Moses  east  their  literature  on  the  town  of  Queen 
Victoria.  When  this  great  benefactor  of  his  species 
departed  this  life,  on  May  the  12th,  1691,  a  satirical 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  91 

broadsheet  called  on  the  world  to  mourn  for  the  loss 

of  one— 

"So  skilled  in  drugs  and  verse,  'twas  hard  to  show  it, 
Whether  was  best,  the  doctor  or  the  poet." 

The  ode  continues:— 

"Lament,  ye  damsels  of  our  London  city, 
(Poor  unprovided  girls)  tho'  fair  and  witty, 
Who,  maskt,  would  to  his  house  in  couples  come. 
To  understand  your  matrimonial  doom; 
To  know  what  kind  of  men  you  were  to  marry, 
And  how  long  time,  poor  things,  you  were  to  tarry; 
Your  oracle  is  silent,  none  can  tell 
On  whom  his  astrologick  mantle  fell : 
For  he  when  sick  refused  all  doctors'  aid. 
And  only  to  his  pills  devotion  paid! 
Yet  it  was  surely  a  most  sad  disaster. 
The  saucy  pills  at  last  should  kill  their  master." 

EPITAPH. 

"Here  lies  the  corpse  of  Thomas   Saflold, 
By  death,  in  spite  of  physick,  baffled; 
Who,  leaving  off  his  working  loom. 
Did  learned  doctor  soon  become. 
To  poetry  he  made  pretence. 
Too  plain  to  any  man's  own  sense; 
But  he  when  living  thought  it  sin 
To  hide  his  talent  in  napkin; 
Now  death  does  doctor   (poet)   crowd 
Within  the  limits  of  a   shroud." 

The  vocation  of  fortune-teller  was  exercised  not 
only  by  the  quacks,  but  also  by  the  apothecaries,  of 
that  period.  Garth  had  ample  foundation,  in  fact, 
for  his  satirical  sketch  of  Horoscope's  shop  in  the  sec- 
ond canto  of  "The  Dispensary." 

"Long  has  he  been  of  that  amphibious  fry. 
Bold  to  prescribe  and  busie  to  apply; 
His  shop  the  gazing  vulgars'  eyes  employs, 
With  foreign  trinkets  and  domestick  toys. 
Here  mummies   lay   most  reverendly   stale, 
And  there  the  tortoise  hung  her  coat  of  mail. 
Not  far  from  some  huge  shark's  devouring  head 
The  flying  fish  their  finny  pinions  spread; 
Aloft  in  rows  large  poppy-heads  were  strung. 


92  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

And  near  a  scaly  alligator  hung; 

In  this  place,   drugs  in  musty  heaps  decay'd, 

In  that,  dry'd  bladders  and  drawn  teeth  were  laid. 

"An  inner  room  receives  the  num'rous  shoals 
Of  such  as  pay  to  be  reputed  fools; 
Globes  stand  by  globes,  volumes  by  volumes  lye. 
And  planetary  schemes  amuse  the  eye. 
The  sage,  in  velvet  chair,  here  lolls  at  ease. 
To  promise  future  health   for  present  fees. 
Then,  as  from  Tripod,  solemn  shams  reveals. 
And  what  the  stars  know  nothing  of  reveals. 

"One  asks  how  soon  Panthea  may  be  won, 
And  longs  to  feel  the  marriage  fetters  on; 
Others,  convinced  by  melancholy  proof. 
Enquire  when  courteous  fates  will  strike  them  off; 
Some  by  what  means  they  may  redress  the  wrong, 
When  fathers  the  possession  keep  too  long; 
And  some  would  know  the  issue  of  their  cause, 
And  whether  gold  can  solder  up  its  flaws. 
****** 

"Whilst  Iris  his   cosmetick  wash  would  try, 
To  make  her  bloom  revive,  and  lovers  die; 
Some  ask  for  charms,  and  others  philters  choose. 
To  gain  Corinna,  and  their  quartans  lose." 

Queen  Anne's  weak  eyes  caused  her  to  pass  from 
one  empiric  to  another,  for  the  relief  they  all  prom- 
ised to  give,  and  in  some  cases  even  persuaded  that 
they  gave  her.  She  had  a  passion  for  quack  oculists ; 
and  happy  was  the  advertising  scoundrel  who  gained 
her  ^Majesty's  favour  with  a  new  collyrium.  For,  of 
course,  if  the  greatest  personage  in  the  land  said  that 
Professor  Bungalo  was  a  wonderful  man,  a  master 
of  his  art,  and  inspired  by  God  to  heal  the  sick,  there 
was  no  appeal  from  so  eminent  an  authority.  How 
should  an  elderly  lady  with  a  crown  on  her  head  be 
mistaken  ?  Do  we  not  hear  the  same  arguments  every 
day  in  our  own  enlightened  generation,  when 
the  new  Chiropodist,  or  Rubber,  or  inventor  of  a  spe- 
cific for  consumption,  points  to  the  social  distinctions 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  93 

of  his  dupes  as  conclusive  evidence  that  he  is  neither 
supported  by  vulgar  ignorance,  nor  afraid  to  meet 
the  most  searching  scrutiny  of  the  educated?  Good 
Queen  Anne  was  so  charmed  with  two  of  the  many 
knaves  who  by  turns  enjoyed  her  countenance,  that 
she  had  them  sworn  in  as  her  own  oculists  in  ordi- 
nary; and  one  of  them  she  was  even  so  silly  as  to 
knight.  This  lucky  gentleman  was  William  Reade, 
originally  a  botching  tailor,  and  to  the  last  a  very  ig- 
norant man,  as  his  "Short  and  Exact  Account  of  all 
Diseases  Incident  to  the  Eyes"  attests;  yet  he  rose  to 
the  honour  of  knighthood,  and  the  most  lucrative  and 
fashionable  physician's  practice  of  his  period.  Surely 
every  dog  has  his  day.  Lazarus  never  should  despair ; 
a  turn  of  fortune  may  one  fine  day  pick  him  from  the 
rags  which  cover  his  nakedness  in  the  kennel,  and 
put  him  to  feast  amongst  princes,  arrayed  in  purple 
and  fine  linen,  and  regarded  as  an  oracle  of  wisdom. 
It  was  true  that  Sir  William  Reade  was  unable  to 
read  the  book  which  he  had  written  (by  the  hand  of 
an  amanuensis),  but  I  have  no  doubt  that  many 
worthy  people  who  listened  to  his  sonorous  voice,  bC" 
held  his  lace  ruffles  and  gold-headed  cane,  and  saw 
his  coach  drawn  along  to  St.  James's  by  superb  horses, 
thought  him  in  every  respect  equal,  or  even  superior, 
to  Pope  and  Swift. 

When  Sir  William  was  knighted  he  hired  a  poet, 
who  lived  in  Grub  Street,  to  announce  the  fact  to  pos- 
terity and  "the  town,"  in  decasyllabic  verse.  The  pro- 
duction of  this  bard,  "The  Oculist,  a  Poem,"  was 
published  in  the  year  1705,  and  has  already  (thanks 
to  the  British  Museum,  which  like  the  nets  of  fisher- 
men receiveth  of  "all  sorts")  endowed  with  a  century 


94  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

and  a  half  of  posthumous  renov\Ti ;  and  no  one  can 
deny  that  so  much  fame  is  due,  both  to  the  man  who 
bought,  and  the  scribbler  who  sold  the  following 
strain:— 

"Whilst  Britain's  Sovereign  scales  such  worth  has   weighed, 
And  Anne  herself  her  smiling  favours  paid, 
That  sacred  hand  does  your  fair  chaplet  twist. 
Great  Reade  her  own  entitled  Oculist. 
With  this  fair  mark  of  honour,  sir,  assume 
No  common  trophies  from  this  shining  plume; 
Her  favours  by  desert  are  only  shared — 
Her  smiles  are  not  her  gift,  but  her  reward. 
Thus  in  your  new  fair  plumes  of  Honour  drest. 
To  hail  the  Royal   Foundress  of  the  feast; 
When  the  great  Anne's  warm  smiles  this  favourite  raise, 
'Tis  not  a  royal  grace  she  gives,  but  pays." 

Queen    Anne's   other   "sworn   oculist,"   as   he    and 

Reade  termed  themselves,  was  Roger  Grant,  a  cobbler 

and  Anabaptist  preacher.  He  was  a  prodigiously  vain 

man,  even  for  a  quack,  and  had  his  likeness  engraved 

in  copper.    Impressions  of  the  plate  were  distributed 

amongst  his  friends,  but  were  not  in  all  cases  treated 

with  much  respect;  for  one  of  those  who  had  been 

complimented  with  a  present  of  the  eminent  oculist's 

portrait,  fixed  it  on  a  wall  of  his  house,  having  first 

adorned  it  with  the  following  lines  :— 

"See  here  a  picture  of  a  brazen  face. 

The  fittest  lumber  of  this  wretched  place. 
A  tinker  first  his  scene  of  life  began; 
That  failing,  he  set  up  for  cunning  man; 
But  wanting  luck,  puts  on  a  new  disguise, 
And  now  pretends  that  he  can  mend  your  eyes; 
But  this  expect,  that,  like  a  tinker  true. 
Where  he  repairs  one  eye  he  puts  out  two." 

The  charge  of  his  being  a  tinker  was  preferred 
against  him  also  by  another  lampoon  writer.  "In  his 
stead  up  popped  Roger  Grant,  the  tinker,  of  whom  a 
friend  of  mine  once  sung. — 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  95 

"'Her  Majesty  sure  was  in  a  surprise, 
Or  else  was  very  short-sighted; 
When  a  tinker  was  sworn  to  look  after  her  eyes, 
And  the  mountebank  Reade  was  knighted.' " 

This  man,  aceordinor  to  the  custom  of  his  class,  was 
in  the  habit  of  publishing  circumstantial  and  minute 
accounts  of  his  cures.  Of  course  his  statements  were 
a  tissue  of  untruths,  vnth  just  the  faintest  possible 
admixture  of  what  was  not  altogether  false.  His  plan, 
was  to  get  hold  of  some  poor  person  of  imperfect  vis- 
ion, and,  after  treating  him  with  medicines  and  half- 
crowns  for  six  weeks,  induce  him  to  sign  a  testi- 
monial to  the  effect  that  he  had  been  born  stone-blind, 
and  had  never  enjoyed  any  visual  power  whatever, 
till  Providence  led  him  to  good  Dr.  Grant,  who  had 
cured  him  in  little  more  than  a  month.  This  certifi-* 
cate  the  clergyman  and  churchwardens  of  the  parish, 
in  which  the  patient  had  been  known  to  wander  about 
the  streets  in  mendicancy,  were  asked  to  attest;  and 
if  they  proved  impregnable  to  the  cunning  represen- 
tations of  the  importunate  suitors,  and  declined  to 
give  the  evidence  of  their  handwriting,  either  on  the 
ground  that  they  had  reason  to  question  the  fact  of 
the  original  blindness,  or  because  they  were  not  thor- 
oughly acquainted  with  the  particulars  of  the  case, 
Dr.  Grant  did  not  scruple  to  sign  their  names  himself, 
or  by  the  hands  of  his  agents.  The  modus  operandi 
with  which  he  carried  out  these  frauds  may  be  learned 
by  the  curious  in  a  pamphlet,  published  in  the  year 
1709,  and  entitled  "A  Full  and  True  Account  of  a 
Miraculous  Cure  of  a  Young  Man  in  Newington  that 
was  Born  Blind." 

But  the  last  century  was  rife  with  medical  quacks. 
The  Rev.  John  Hancocke,  D.D.,  Rector  of  St.  Mar- 


96  A   BOUK  ABOUT  DOCTOKS. 

garet's,  Lothbury,  London,  Prebendary  of  Canter- 
bury, and  chaplain  to  the  Duke  of  Bedford,  preached 
up  the  water-cure,  which  Pliny  the  naturalist  de- 
scribed as  being  in  his  day  the  fashionable  remedy  in 
Rome.  He  published  a  work  in  1723  that  immediately 
became  popular,  called  "Febrifugum  Magnum;  or, 
Common  Water  the  best  Cure  for  Fevers,  and  prob- 
ably for  the  Plague." 

The  good  man  deemed  himself  a  genius  of  the  high- 
est order,  because  he  had  discovered  that  a  draught 
of  cold  water,  under  certain  circumstances,  is  a  pow- 
erful diaphoretic.  Ilis  pharmacopeia,  however,  con- 
tained another  remedy— namely,  stewed  prunes,  which 
the  Doctor  regarded  as  a  specific  in  obstinate  eases 
of  blood-spitting.  Then  there  was  Ward,  with  his  fa- 
mous pill,  whose  praises  that  learned  man,  Lord  Chief 
Baron  Reynolds,  sounded  in  every  direction.  There 
was  also  a  tar-water  mania,  which  mastered  the  clear 
intellect  of  Henry  Fielding,  and  had  as  its  principal 
advocate  the  supreme  intellect  of  the  age,  Bishop 
Berkeley.  In  volume  eighteen  of  the  Gentleman' >>' 
Magazine  is  a  list  of  the  quack-doctors  then  practis- 
ing; and  the  number  of  those  named  in  it  is  almost  as 
numerous  as  the  nostrums,  which  mount  up  to  202. 
These  accommodating  fellows  were  ready  to  fleece  eve- 
ry rank  of  society.  The  fashionable  impostor  sold 
his  specific  sometimes  at  the  rate  of  2s.  &d.  a  pill,  while 
the  humbler  knave  vended  his  boluses  at  6d.  a  box. 
To  account  for  society  tolerating,  and  yet  more,  warm- 
ly encouraging  such  a  state  of  things,  we  must  remem- 
ber the  force  of  the  example  set  by  eminent  physicians 
in  vending  medicines  the  composition  of  which  they 
kept  secret.    Sir  Hans  Sloane  sold  an  eye-salve;  and 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  97 

Dr.  Mead  had  a  favourite  nostnim— a  powder  for  the 
bite  of  a  mad  dog. 

The  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  not  in 
respect  of  its  quacks  behind  the  few  preceding  gen- 
erations. In  1789  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Loutherbourg  became 
notorious  for  curing  people  without  medicine.  God, 
they  proclaimed,  had  endowed  them  with  a  miracu- 
lous power  of  healing  the  impoverished  sick,  by  look- 
ing upon  them  and  touching  them.  Of  course  every 
one  who  presumed  to  doubt  the  statement  was  re- 
garded as  calling  in  question  the  miracles  of  holy 
writ,  and  was  exclaimed  against  as  an  infidel.  The 
doctor's  house  was  besieged  with  enormous  crowds. 
The  good  man  and  his  lady  refused  to  take  any  fee 
whatever,  and  issued  gratuitous  tickets  amongst  the 
mob,  which  would  admit  the  bearers  into  the  Louther- 
bourgian  presence.  Strange  to  say,  however,  these 
tickets  found  their  way  into  the  hands  of  venal  people, 
who  sold  them  to  others  in  the  crowd  (who  were  tired 
of  waiting)  for  sums  varying  from  two  to  five  guineas 
each;  and  ere  long  it  was  discovered  that  these  bar- 
terers  of  the  healing  power  were  accomplices  in  the 
pay  of  the  poor  man's  friend.  A  certain  Miss  Mary 
Pratt,  in  all  probability  a  puppet  acting  in  obedience 
to  Loutherbourg 's  instructions,  wrote  an  account  of 
the  cures  performed  by  the  physician  and  his  wife. 
In  a  dedicatory  letter  to  the  Archbishop  of  Cjinter- 
bury.  Miss  Pratt  says:— "I  therefore  presume  when 
these  testimonies  are  searched  into  (which  will  cor- 
roborate with  mine)  your  Lordship  will  compose  a 
form  of  prayer,  to  be  used  in  all  churches  and  chap- 
els, that  nothing  may  impede  or  prevent  this  inestima- 
ble gift  from  having  its   free  course;  and  publick 


98  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

thanks  may  be  offered  up  in  all  churches  and  chapels, 
for  such  an  astonishing  proof  of  God's  love  to  this 
favoured  land."  The  publication  frankly  states  that 
"Mr.  De  Loutherbourg,  who  lives  on  Hammersmith 
Green,  has  received  a  most  glorious  power  from  the 
Lord  Jehovah— viz.  the  gift  of  healing  all  manner  of 
diseases  incident  to  the  human  body,  such  as  blind- 
ness, deafness,  lameness,  cancers,  loss  of  speech,  pal- 
sies." But  the  statements  of  "cases"  are  yet  more 
droll.  The  reader  will  enjoy  the  perusal  of  a  few  of 
them. 

"Case  of  Thomas  Eohinson.— Thomas  Robinson  was 
sent  home  to  his  parents  at  the  sign  of  the  Ram,  a  pub- 
lic-house in  Cow  Cross,  so  ill  with  what  is  called  the 
king's  evil,  that  they  applied  for  leave  to  bring  him 
into  St  Bartholomew's  Hospital."  (Of  course  he 
was  discharged  as  "incurable,"  and  was  eventually 
restored  to  health  by  Mr.  Loutherbourg.)  "But 
how,"  continues  Miss  Pratt,  "shall  my  pen  paint  in- 
gratitude? The  mother  had  procured  a  ticket  for 
him  from  the  Finsbury  Dispensary,  and  with  a  shame- 
ful reluctance  denied  having  seen  Mr  De  Louther- 
bourg,  waited  on  the  kind  gentleman  belonging  to 
the  dispensary,  and,  amazing!  thanked  them  for  relief 
which  they  had  no  hand  in ;  for  she  told  me  and  fifty 
more,  she  took  the  drugs  and  medicines  and  threw 
them  away,  reserving  the  phials,  &c.  Such  an  im- 
position on  the  public  ought  to  be  detected,  as  she  de- 
prived other  poor  people  of  those  medicines  which 
might  have  been  useful ;  not  only  so— robbed  the  Lord 
of  Life  of  the  glory  due  to  him  only,  by  returning 
thanks  at  the  dispensary  for  a  cure  which  they  had 
never  performed.     The  lad  is  now  under  Mr  De 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  99 

Loutherbourg's  care,  who  administered  to  him  be- 
fore me  yesterday  in  the  public  healing-room,  amongst 
a  large  concourse  of  people,  amongst  whom  was  some 
of  the  first  families  in  the  kingdom." 

"Case.— Mary  Ann  Hughes.— Her  father  is  chair- 
man to  her  Grace  the  Duchess  of  Rutland,  who  lives  at 
No.  37,  in  Ogle  Street.  She  had  a  most  violent  fever, 
fell  into  her  knee,  went  to  Middlesex  Hospital,  where' 
they  made  every  experiment  in  order  to  cui'e  her— 
but  in  vain;  she  came  home  worse  than  she  went  in, 
her  leg  contracted  and  useless.  In  this  deplorable 
state  she  waited  on  Mrs  De  Loutherbourg,  who,  with 
infinite  condescension,  saw  her,  administered  to  her, 
and  the  second  time  of  waiting  on  Mrs  De  Louther- 
bourg she  was  perfectly  cured. ' ' 

"Case. — Mrs  Hook.— Mrs  Hook,  Stableyard,  St 
James's,  has  two  daughters  born  deaf  and  dumb.  She 
waited  on  the  lady  above-mentioned,  who  looked  on 
them  with  an  eye  of  benignity,  and  healed  them.  (I 
heard  them  both  speak.)" 

Mary  Pratt,  after  enumerating  several  cases  like  the 
foregoing,  concludes  thus: 

"Let  me  repeat,  with  horror  and  detestation,  the 
wickedness  of  those  who  have  procured  tickets  of  ad- 
mission, and  sold  them  for  five  and  two  guineas  a- 
piece!— whereas  this  gift  was  chiefly  intended  for 
the  poor.  Therefore  i\Ir  De  Loutherbourg  has  retired 
from  the  practice  into  the  country  (for  the  present), 
ha\ing  suffered  all  the  indignities  and  contumely 
that  man  could  suft'er,  joined  to  ungrateful  behav- 
iour, and  tumultuous  proceedings.  I  have  heard  peo-' 
pie  curse  him  and  threaten  his  life,  instead  of  return- 
ing him  thanks ;  and  it  is  my  humble  wish  that  pray- 


100  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

ers  may  be  put  up  in  all  churches  for  his  great  gifts  to 
multiply." 

"Finis. 

"Report  says  three  thousand  persons  have  waited 
for  tickets  at  a  time." 

Forming  a  portion  of  this  interesting  work  by  Miss 
Pratt  is  a  description  of  a  case  which  throws  the 
Loutherbourgian  miracles  into  the  shade,  and  is  ap- 
parently cited  only  for  the  insight  it  affords  into  the 
state  of  public  feeling  in  Queen  Anne's  time,  as  con- 
trasted  with  the  sceptical  enlightenment  of  George 
III.'s  reign: — 

"I  hope  the  public  will  allow  me  to  adduce  a  case 
which  history  will  evince  the  truth  of.  A  girl,  whose 
father  and  mother  were  French  refugees,  had  her  hip 
dislocated  from  her  birth.  She  was  apprentice  to  a 
milliner,  and  obliged  to  go  out  about  the  mistress's 
business ;  the  boys  used  to  insult  her  for  her  lamenes^ 

continuallj'-,  as  she  limped  very  much 

Providence  directed  her  to  read  one  of  the  miracles 
performed  by  our  blessed  Saviour  concerning  the 
withered  arm.  The  girl  exclaimed,  'Oh,  madam,  was 
Jesus  here  on  earth  he  would  cure  me.'  Her  mistress 
answered,  'If  you  have  faith,  his  power  is  the  same 
now.'  She  immediately  cried,  'I  have  faith!'  and 
the  bone  flew  into  its  place  with  a  report  like  the  noise 
of  a  pistol.  The  girl's  joy  was  ecstatic.  She  jumped 
about  the  room  in  raptures.  The  servant  was  called, 
sent  for  her  parents,  and  the  minister  under  whom 
she  sat.  They  spent  the  night  praising  God.  Hun- 
dreds came  to  see  her,  amongst  whom  was  the  Bishop 
of  London,  by  the  command  of  her  Majesty  Queen 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  101 

Anne  (for  in  those  days  people  were  astonished  at 
this  great  miracle.) "  ;  -      •■    •        ;     . 

Dr.  Loutherbourg  was  not  the -first  qu-aek  to  lieece 
the  good  people  of  Hammefsmith,  .In  tbe;b72Hd 
paper  of  the  Spectator,  dated  July"  26,  1714,  there  is 
a  good  story  of  a  consummate  artist,  who  surrounded 
himself  with  an  enormous  crowd,  and  assured  them 
that  Hammersmith  was  the  place  of  his  nativity ;  and 
that,  out  of  strong  natural  affection  for  his  birth- 
place, he  was  willing  to  give  each  of  its  inhabitants  a 
present  of  five  shillings.  After  this  exordium,  the 
benevolent  fellow  produced  from  his  cases  an  im- 
mense number  of  packets  of  a  powder  warranted  to 
cure  everything  and  Idll  nothing.  The  price  of  each 
packet  was  properly  five  shillings  and  sixpence ;  but 
out  of  love  for  the  people  of  Hammei-smith  the  good 
doctor  offered  to  let  any  of  his  audience  buy  them  at 
the  rate  of  sixpence  apiece.  The  multitude  availed 
themselves  of  this  proposition  to  such  an  extent  that  it 
is  to  be  feared  the  friend  of  Hammersmith's  humanity 
suffered  greatly  from  his  liberality. 

Steele  has  transmitted  to  us  some  capital  anecdotes 
of  the  empirics  of  his  day.  One  doctor  of  Sir  Rich- 
ard's acquaintance  resided  in  Moore  Alley,  near 
Wapping,  and  proclaimed  his  ability  to  cure  cata- 
racts, because  he  had  lost  an  eye  in  the  emperor's 
service.  To  his  patients  he  was  in  the  habit  of  dis- 
playing, as  a  conclusive  proof  of  his  surgical  prowess, 
a  muster-roll  showing  that  either  he,  or  a  man  of  his 
name,  had  been  in  one  of  his  imperial  Majesty's  regi- 
ments. At  the  sight  of  this  document  of  course  mis- 
trust fled.  Another  man  professed  to  treat  ruptured 
children,  because  his  father  and  grandfather  were 


102  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

born  bursten.  But  more  humorous  even  than  either 
'of  these  gentlemen  was  another  friend  of  Sir  Kieh- 
ar(l''s,  who  announced  to  the  public  that  "from  eight 
to  twelve  and  fro-n  two  till  six,  he  attended  for  the 
good  of  the  public  to  bleed  for  threepence." 

The  fortunes  which  pretenders  'to  the  healing  art 
have  amassed  would  justify  a  belief  that  empiricism, 
under  favourable  circumstances,  is  the  best  trade  to 
be  found  in  the  entire  list  of  industrial  occupations. 
Quaclis  have  in  all  ages  found  staunch  supporters 
amongst  the  powerful  and  affluent.  Dr.  Myersbach, 
whom  Lettsom  endeavoured  to  drive  back  into  ob- 
scurity, continued,  long  after  the  publication  of  the 
"Observations,"  to  make  a  large  income  out  of  the 
credulity  of  the  fashionable  classes  of  English  society, 
AVithout  learning  of  any  kind,  this  man  raised  himself 
to  opulence.  His  degree  was  bought  at  Erfurth  for 
a  few  shillings,  just  before  that  university  raised  the 
prices  of  its  academical  distinctions,  in  consequence 
of  the  pleasant  raillery  of  a  young  Englishman,  who 
paid  the  fees  for  a  Doctor's  diploma,  and  had  it  duly 
recorded  in  the  Collegiate  archives  as  having  been 
presented  to  Anglicus  Ponto;  Ponto  being  no  other 
than  his  mastiff  dog.  With  such  a  degree  Myersbach 
set  up  for  a  philosopher.  Patients  crowded  to  his 
consulting-room,  and  those  who  were  unable  to  come 
sent  their  servants  with  descriptions  of  their  cases. 
But  his  success  was  less  than  that  of  the  inventor  of 
Ailhaud's  powders,  which  ran  their  devastating 
course  through  every  country  in  Europe,  sending  to 
the  silence  of  the  grave  almost  as  many  thousands  as 
were  destroyed  in  all  Napoleon's  campaigns.  Tissot, 
in  his  "Avis  au  Peuple,"  published  in  1803,  attacked 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  103 

Ailhaud  with  characteristic  vehemence,  and  put  an 
end  to  his  destructive  power ;  but  ere  this  took  place 
the  charlatan  had  mounted  on  his  slaughtered 
myriads  to  the  possession  of  three  baronies,  and  was 
figuring  in  European  courts  as  the  Baron  de  Castelet. 

The  tricks  which  these  practitioners  have  had  re- 
course to  for  the  attainment  of  their  ends  are  various. 
Dr.  Katterfelto,  who  rose  into  eminence  upon  the  evil 
wind  that  brought  the  influenza  to  England  in  the 
year  1782,  always  travelled  about  the  country  in  a 
large  caravan,  containing  a  number  of  black  cats. 
This  gentleman's  triumphant  campaign  was  brought 
to  a  disastrous  termination  by  the  mayor  of  Shrews- 
bury, who  gave  him  a  taste  of  the  sharp  discipline 
provided  at  that  time  by  the  law  for  rogues  and 
vagabonds.— "The  "Wise  Man  of  Liverpool,"  whose 
destiny  it  was  to  gull  the  canny  inhabitants  of  the 
North  of  England,  used  to  traverse  the  country  in  a 
chariot  drawn  by  sis  horses,  attended  by  a  perfect 
army  of  outriders  in  brilliant  liveries,  and  affecting 
all  the  pomp  of  a  prince  of  the  royal  blood. 

The  quacks  who  merit  severe  punishment  the  least 
of  all  their  order  are  those  who,  while  they  profess 
to  exercise  a  powerful  influence  over  the  bodies  of 
their  patients,  leave  nature  to  pursue  her  operations 
pretty  much  in  her  own  way.  Of  this  comparatively 
harmless  class  was  Atwell,  the  parson  of  St.  Tue,  who, 
according  to  the  account  given  of  him  by  Fuller,  in 
his  English  ^\'orthies,  "although  he  now  and  then 
used  blood-letting,  mostly  for  all  diseases  prescribed 
milk,  and  often  milk  and  apples,  which  (although 
contrary  to  the  judgments  of  the  best-esteemed 
practitioners)  either  by  virtue    of   the  medicine,    or 


104  A    BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

fortune  of  the  physician,  or  fancy  of  the  patient,  re- 
covered many  out  of  desperate  extremities."  At  well 
won  his  reputation  by  acting:  on  the  same  principle 
that  has  brought  a  certain  degree  of  popularity  to  the 
homoeopathists— that,  namely,  of  letting  things  run 
their  own  course.  The  higher  order  of  empirics  have 
always  availed  themselves  of  the  wonderful  faculty 
possessed  by  nature  of  taking  good  care  of  herself. 
Simple  people  who  enlarge  on  the  series  of  miraculous 
cures  performed  by  their  pet  charlatan,  and  find  in 
them  proofs  of  his  honesty  and  professional  worth,  do 
not  reflect  that  in  ninety-and-nine  cases  out  of  every 
hundred  where  a  sick  person  is  restored  to  health,  the 
result  is  achieved  by  nature  rather  than  art,  and 
would  have  been  arrived  at  as  speedily  without  as 
with  medicine.  Again,  the  fame  of  an  ordinary 
medical  practitioner  is  never  backed  up  by  simple 
and  compound  addition.  His  cures  and  half  cures 
are  never  summed  up  to  magnificent  total  by  his  em- 
ployers, and  then  flaunted  about  on  a  bright  banner 
before  the  eyes  of  the  electors.  'Tis  a  mere  matter 
of  course  that  ho  (although  he  is  quite  wrong,  and 
knows  not  half  as  much  about  his  art  as  any  great 
lady  who  has  tested  the  efficacy  of  the  new  system  on 
her  sick  poodle)  should  cure  people.  'Tis  only  the 
cause  of  globules  which  is  to  be  supported  by  docu- 
mentary evidence,  containing  the  case  of  every  young 
lady  who  has  lost  a  severe  headache  under  the  benign 
influence  of  an  infinitesimal  dose  of  flour  and  water. 
Dumoulin,  the  physician,  observed  at  his  death 
that  "he  left  behind  him  two  great  physicians.  Regi- 
men and  River  AVater."  A  due  appreciation  of  the 
truth  embodied  in  this  remark,   coupled  with  that 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  105 

masterly  assurance,  without  which  the  human  family 
is  not  to  be  fleeced,  enabled  the  French  quack,  Villars, 
to  do  good  to  others  and  to  himself  at  the  same  time. 
This  man,  in  1723,  confided  to  his  friends  that  his 
uncle,  who  had  recently  been  killed  by  an  accident  at 
the  advanced  age  of  one  hundred  years,  had  be- 
queathed to  him  the  recipe  for  a  nostrum  which  would 
prolong  the  life  of  any  one  who  used  it  to  a  hundred 
and  fifty,  provided  only  that  the  rules  of  sobriety 
were  never  transgressed.  Whenever  a  funeral  passed 
him  in  the  street  he  said  aloud,  "Ah!  if  that  unfortu- 
nate creature  had  taken  my  nostrum,  he  might  be 
carrying  that  coffin,  instead  of  being  carried  in  it." 
This  nostrum  was  composed  of  nitre  and  Seine  water^ 
and  was  sold  at  the  ridiculously  cheap  rate  of  five 
francs  a  bottle.  Those  who  bought  it  were  directed  to 
drink  it  at  certain  stated  periods,  and  also  to  lead  reg- 
ular lives,  to  eat  moderately,  drink  temperately,  take 
plenty  of  bodily  exercise,  go  to  and  rise  from  bed 
early,  and  to  avoid  mental  anxiety.  In  an  enormous 
majority  .of  cases  the  patient  was  either  cured  or  bene- 
fitted. Some  possibly  died,  who,  by  the  ministrations 
of  science,  might  have  been  preserved  from  the  grave. 
But  in  these  eases,  and  doubtless  they  were  few,  the 
blunder  was  set  down  to  Nature,  who,  somewhat  un- 
justly, was  never  credited  with  any  of  the  recoveries. 
The  world  was  charitable,  and  the  doctor  could  say— 

"The  grave  my  faults   does  hide, 
The  world  my  cures  does  see; 
What  youth  and  time  provide, 
Are  oft  ascribed  to  me." 

Anyhow  Villars  succeeded,  and  won  the  approbation 

not  only  of  his  dupes,  but  of  those  also  who    were 

sagacious  enough  to  see  the  nature  of  his  trick.    The 


106  A  BOOIC  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

Abbe  Pons  declared  him  to  be  the  superior  of  the  mar- 
shal of  the  same  name.  "The  latter,"  said  he,  "kills 
men— the  former  prolongs  their  existence."  At  length 
Villars'  secret  leaked  out;  and  his  patients,  unwise  in 
coming  to  him,  unwisely  deserted  him.  His  occupa- 
tion was  gone. 

The  displeasure  of  Villars'  dupes,  on  the  discovery 
of  the  benevolent  hoax  played  upon  them,  reminds 
us  of  a  good  story.  Some  years  since,  at  a  fashion- 
able watering-place,  on  the  south-east  coast  of  Eng- 
land, resided  a  young  surgeon— handsome,  well-bred, 
and  of  most  pleasant  address.  He  was  fast  rising 
into  public  favour  and  a  good  practice,  when  an  eccen- 
tric and  wealthy  maiden  lady,  far  advanced  in  years, 
sent  for  him.  The  summons  of  course  was  promptly 
obeyed,  and  the  young  practitioner  was  soon  listening 
to  a  most  terrible  story  of  suffering.  The  afBicted 
lady,  according  to  her  own  account,  had  a  year  before, 
during  the  performance  of  her  toilet,  accidental!}' 
taken  into  her  throat  one  of  the  bristles  of  her  tooth- 
brush. This  bristle  had  stuck  in  the  top  of  the  gullet, 
and  set  up  an  irritation  which,  she  was  convinced, 
was  killing  her.  She  had  been  from  one  surgeon  of 
eminence  to  another,  and  everywhere  in  London  and 
in  the  country  the  Faculty  had  assured  her  that  she 
was  only  the  victim  of  a  nervous  delusion— that  her 
throat  was  in  a  perfectly  healthy  condition— that  the 
disturbance  existed  only  in  her  own  imagination. 
"And  so  they  go  on,  the  stupid,  obstinate,  perverse, 
unfeeling  creatures,"  concluded  the  poor  lady,  "say- 
ing there  is  nothing  the  matter  with  me,  while  I  am— 
dying— dying— dying!"  "Allow  me,  my  dear  lady," 
said  the  adroit  surgeon  in  reply,  "to  inspect  for  my- 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  107 

self— carefully— the  state  of  your  throat."  The  in- 
spection was  made  gravely,  and  at  much  length.  ' '  My 

dear  Miss ,"  resumed  the  surgeon,  when  he  had 

concluded  his  examination,  "you  are  quite  right,  and 
Sir  Benjamin  Brodie  and  Sir  James  Clark  are  wrong. 
I  can  see  the  head  of  the  bristle  low  down,  almost  out 
of  sight;  and  if  you'll  let  me  run  home  for  my  instru- 
ments, I'll  forthwith  extract  it  for  you."  The  adroit 
man  retired,  and  in  a  few  minutes  re-entered  the 
room,  armed  with  a  very  delicate  pair  of  forceps,  into 
the  teeth  of  which  he  had  inserted  a  bristle  taken 
from  an  ordinary  tooth-brush.  The  rest  can  be 
imagined.  The  lady  threw  back  her  head ;  the  forceps 
were  introduced  into  her  mouth;  a  prick— a  scream! 
and  'twas  all  over;  and  the  surgeon,  with  a  smiling 
face,  was  holding  up  to  the  light,  and  inspecting  with 
lively  curiosity,  the  extracted  bristle.  The  patient 
was  in  raptures  at  a  result  that  proved  that  she  was 
right,  and  Sir  Benjamin  Brodie  wrong.  She  im- 
mediately recovered  her  health  and  spirits,  and  went 
about  everywhere  sounding  the  praises  of  "her 
saviour,"  as  she  persisted  in  calling  the  dexterous 
operator.  So  enthusiastic  was  her  gratitude,  she 
offered  him  her  hand  in  marriage  and  her  noble 
fortune.  The  fact  that  the  young  surgeon  was  al- 
ready married  was  an  insuperable  obstacle  to  this  ar- 
rangement. But  other  proofs  of  gratitude  the  lady 
lavishly  showered  on  him.  She  compelled  him  to 
accept  a  carriage  and  horses,  a  service  of  plate,  and  a 
new  house.  Unfortunately  the  lucky  fellow  could  not 
keep  his  own  counsel.  Like  foolish  Samson  with 
Delilah,  he  imparted  the  secret  of  his  cunning  to  the 
wife  of  his  bosom;  she  confided  it  to  Louise  Clarissa, 


108  A   BOOK   ABOXJT   DOCTORS. 

her  especial  friend,  who  had  been  her  bridesmaid ; 
Louise  Clarissa  told  it  under  vows  of  inviolable 
secrecy  to  six  other  particular  friends;  and  the  six 
other  particular  friends— base  and  unworthy  girls!  — 
told  it  to  all  the  world.  Ere  long  the  story  came 
round  to  the  lady  herself.  Then  what  a  storm  arose ! 
She  was  in  a  transport  of  fury!  It  was  of  no  avail 
for  the  surgeon  to  remind  her  that  he  had  unques- 
tionably raised  her  from  a  pitiable  condition  to  health 
and  happiness.  That  mattered  not.  He  had  tricked, 
fooled,  bamboozled  her!  She  would  not  forgive  him, 
she  would  pursue  him  with  undying  vengeance,  she 
would  ruin  him !  The  writer  of  these  pages  is  happy 
to  know  that  the  surgeon  here  spoken  of,  whose  pros- 
perous career  has  been  adorned  by  much  genuine 
benevolence,  though  unforgiven,  was  not  ruined. 

The  ignorant  are  remarkable  alike  for  suspicion 
and  credulity ;  and  the  quack  makes  them  his  prey  by 
lulling  to  sleep  the  former  quality,  and  artfully  arous- 
ing and  playing  upon  the  latter.  Whatever  the  field 
of  quackery  may  be,  the  dupe  must  ever  be  the  same. 
Some  years  since  a  canny  drover,  from  the  north  of 
the  Tweed,  gained  a  high  reputation  throughout  the 
Eastern  Counties  for  selling  at  high  prices  the  beasts 
intrusted  to  him  as  a  salesman.  At  Norwich  and 
Earl  Soham,  at  Bury  and  Ipswich,  the  story  was  the 
same— Peter  M'Dougal  invariably  got  more  per  head 
for  "a  lot"  than  even  his  warmest  admirers  had 
calculated  he  would  obtain.  He  managed  his  busi- 
ness so  well,  that  his  brethren,  unable  to  compete  with 
him,  came  to  a  conclusion  not  altogether  supported  by 
the  facts  of  the  case,  but  flattering  to  their  own  self- 
love.     Clearly  Peter  could  only  surpass  them  by  such 


A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  109 

a  long  distance,  through  the  agency  of  some  charm 
or  witch's  secret.  They  hinted  as  much;  and  Peter 
wisely  accepted  the  suggestion,  with  a  half-assenting 
nod  of  cunning,  and  encouraged  his  mates  to  believe 
in  it.  A  year  or  so  passed  on,  and  it  was  generally 
allowed  that  Peter  M'Dougal  was  in  league  on  hon- 
ourable terms  with  the  unseen  world.  To  contend 
with  him  was  useless.  The  only  line  open  to  his 
would-be  imitators  was  to  buy  from  him  participa- 
tions in  his  mysterious  powers.  "Peter,"  at  length 
said  a  simple  southern,  at  the  close  of  lialesworth 
cattle-fair,  acting  as  spokesman  for  himself  and  four 
other  conspirators,  "lets  us  into  yer  secret,  man. 
Yer  ha'  made  here  twelve  pun  a  yead  by  a  lot  thai; 
aren't  woth  sex.  How  ded  yer  doo  it?  We  are  all 
owld  friens.  Lets  us  goo  to  'Th'  Alter 'd  Case,'  an  I 
an  my  mets  uU  stan  yar  supper  an  a  dead  drunk  o' 
whiskey  or  rom  poonch,  so  be  yar  jine  bans  to  giv  us 
the  wink."  Peter's  eyes  twinkled.  He  liked  a  good 
supper  and  plenty  of  hot  grog  at  a  friend's  expense. 
Indeed,  of  such  fare,  like  Sheridan  with  wine,  he  waa 
ready  to  take  any  given  quantity.  The  bargain  was 
made,  and  an  immediate  adjournment  effected  to  the 
public-house  rejoicing  in  the  title  of  "The  Case  is 
Altered."  The  supper  was  of  hot  steak-pudding, 
made  savoury  with  pepper  and  onions.  Peter 
M'Dougal  ate  plentifully  and  deliberately.  Slowly 
also  he  drank  two  stiff  tumblers  of  whiskey  punch, 
smoking  his  pipe  meanwhile  without  uttering  a  word. 
The  second  tumbler  was  followed  by  a  third,  and  as  he 
sipped  the  latter  half  of  it,  his  entertainers  closed 
round  him,  and  intimated  that  their  part  of  the  con- 
tract being  accomplished,  he,  as  a  man    of    honour, 


110  A   BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

ought  to  fulfill  his.  Peter  was  a  man  of  few  words, 
and  without  any  unnecessary  prelude  or  comment,  he 
stated  in  one  laconic  speech  the  secret  of  his  profes- 
sional success.  Laying  down  his  pipe  by  his  empty 
glass,  and  emitting  from  his  gray  eyes  a  light  of 
strange  humour,  he  said  drily,  "Ye'd  knoo  hoo  it  was 
I  cam  to  mak  sae  guid  a  sale  o'  my  beasties?  Weel, 
I  ken  it  was  .joost  this— 7  fund  a  fule!" 

The  drover  who  rises  to  be  a  capitalist,  and  the 
lawyer  who  mounts  to  the  woolsack,  ascend  by  the 
same  process.  They  know  how  to  find  out  fools,  and 
how  to  turn  their  discoveries  to  advantage. 

It  is  told  of  a  Barbadoes  physician  and  slaveholder, 
that  having  been  robbed  to  a  serious  extent  in  his 
sugar-works,  he  discovered  the  thief  by  the  following 
ingenious  artifice.  Having  called  his  slaves  together, 
he  addressed  them  thus:— "My  friends,  the  great 
serpent  appeared  to  me  during  the  night,  and  told 
me  that  the  person  who  stole  my  money  should,  at  this 
instant  — tliis  very  instant — have  a  parrot's  feather 
at  the  point  of  his  nose."  On  this  announcement,  the 
dishonest  thief,  anxious  to  find  out  if  his  guilt  had 
declared  itself,  put  his  finger  to  his  nose.  "Man," 
cried  the  master  instantly,  "  'tis  thou  who  hast 
robbed  me.     The  great  serpent  has  just  told  me  so." 

Clearly  tliis  piece  of  quackery  succeeded,  because 
the  quack  had  "fund  a  fule." 


CHAPTER  VII. 

JOHN  RADCLIPPE. 

Radcliffe,  the  Jacobite  partisan,  the  physician  with- 
out learning,  and  the  luxurious  ion-vivant,  who 
grudged  the  odd  sixpences  of  his  tavern  scores,  was 
born  at  Wakefield  in  Yorkshire,  in  the  year  1650. 
His  extraction  was  humble,  his  father  being  only  a 
well-to-do  yeoman.  In  after  life,  when  he  lived  on 
intimate  terms  with  the  leading  nobility  of  the 
country,  he  put  in  a  claim  for  aristocratic  descent; 
and  the  Earl  of  Derwentwater  recognized  him  as  a 
kinsman  deriving  his  blood  from  the  Radcliffes  of 
Dilston,  in  the  county  of  Northumberland,  the  chiefs 
of  which  honourable  family  had  been  knights,  barons, 
and  earls,  from  the  time  of  Henry  IV.  It  may  be  re- 
membered that  a  similar  countenance  was  given  to 
Burke's  patrician  pretensions,  which  have  been  re- 
lated by  more  than  one  biographer,  with  much 
humorous  pomp.  In  Radcliffe 's  case  the  Heralds  in- 
terfered with  the  Earl's  decision;  for  after  the  phy- 
sician's decease  they  admonished  the  University  of 
Oxford  not  to  erect  any  escutcheon  over  or  upon  his 
monument.    But  though  Radcliffe  was  a  plebeian,  he 


112  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

contrived,  by  his  shrewd  humour,  arrogant  simplicity, 
and  immeasurable  insolence,  to  hold  both  Wings  and 
Tories  in  his  grasp.  The  two  factions  of  the  aristoc- 
racy bowed  before  him— the  Tories  from  affection  to 
a  zealous  adherent  of  regal  absolutism;  and  the 
Whigs,  from  a  superstitious  belief  in  his  remedial' 
skill,  and  a  fear  that  in  their  hours  of  need  he  would 
leave  them  to  the  advances  of  Death. 

At  the  age  of  fifteen  he  became  a  member  of  the 
University  College,  Oxford;  and  having  kept  his 
terms  there,  he  took  his  B.  A.  degree  in  1669,  and  was 
made  senior-scholar  of  the  college.  But  no  fellow- 
ship falling  vacant  there,  he  accepted  one  on  the 
foundation  of  Lincoln  College.  His  M.  B.  degree  he 
took  in  1675,  and  forthwith  obtained  considerable 
practice  in  Oxford.  Owing  to  a  misunderstanding 
with  Dr.  Marshall,  the  rector  of  Lincoln  College,  Rad- 
cliffe  relinquished  a  fellowship,  which  he  could  no 
longer  hold,  without  taking  orders,  in  1677.  He  did 
not  take  his  M.  D.  degree  till  1682,  two  years  after 
which  time  he  went  up  to  London,  and  took  a  house  in 
Bow  Street,  next  that  in  which  Sir  Godfrey  Kneller 
long  resided;  and  with  a  facility  which  can  hardly  be 
credited  in  these  days,  when  success  is  achieved  only 
by  slow  advances,  he  stept  forthwith  into  a  magnifi- 
cent income. 

The  days  of  mealy-mouthed  suavity  had  not  yet 
come  to  the  Faculty.  Instead  of  standing  by  each 
other  with  lip-service,  as  they  now  do  in  spite  of  all 
their  jealousies,  physicians  and  surgeons  vented  their 
mutual  enmities  in  frank,  honest  abuse.  Radcliffe's 
tongue  was  well  suited  for  this  part  of  his  business ; 
and  if  that  unruly  member  created  for  him  enemies, 


A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  113 

it  could  also  contend  with  a  legion  of  adversaries  at 
the  same  time.  Foulks  and  Adams,  then  the  first 
apothecaries  in  Oxford,  tried  to  discredit  the  young 
doctor,  but  were  ere  long  compelled  to  sue  for  a  cessa- 
tion of  hostilities.  Luff,  who  afterwards  became 
Professor  of  Physic  in  the  University,  declared  that 
all  "Radcliffe's  cures  were  performed  only  by  guess- 
work"; and  Gibbons,  with  a  sneer,  said,  "that  it  was 
a  pity  that  his  friends  had  not  made  a  scholar  of  the 
young  man."  In  return  Radeliffe  always  persisted 
in  speaking  of  his  opponent  as  Nurse  Gibbons — be- 
cause of  his  slops  and  diet  drinks,  whereas  he  (Rad- 
eliffe the  innovator)  preached  up  the  good  effects  of 
fresh  air,  a  liberal  table,  and  cordials.  This  was  the 
Dr.  Gibbons  around  whom  the  apothecaries  rallied,  to 
defend  their  interests  in  the  great  Dispensarian  con- 
test, and  whom  Garth  in  his  poem  ridicules,  under  the 
name  of  "Mirmillo,"  for  entertaining  drug- ven- 
ders:— 

"Not  far  from  that  frequented  theatre, 
Where  wandering  punks   each  night   at  five  repair, 
Where  purple  emperors  in  buskins  tread, 
And   rule  imaginary  worlds  for  bread; 
Where  Bentley,  by  old  writers,  wealthy  grew. 
And  Briscoe  lately  was  undone  by  new ; 
There  triumphs   a  physician   of  renown, 
To  none,  but  such  as  rust  in  health,  unknown. 
*  *        *  *  *  * 

The  trading  tribe  oft  thither  throng  to  dine, 
And  want  of  elbow-room  supply  in  wine." 

Gibbons  was  not  the  only  dangerous  antagonist  that 
Radeliffe  did  battle  with  in  London.  Dr.  Whistler, 
Sir  Edmund  King,  Sir  Edward  Hannes,  and  Sir 
Richard  Blackmore  were  all  strong  enough  to  hurt 
him  and  rouse  his  jealousy.  Hannes,  also  an  Oxford 
man,  was  to  the  last  a  dangerous  and  hated  rival. 

4— « 


114  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

He  opened  his  campaign  in  London  with  a  carriage 
and  four  horses.  The  equipage  was  so  costly  and 
imposing  that  it  attracted  the  general  attention  of 
the  town.  "By  Jove!  Kadeliffe,"  said  a  kind  friend, 
"Hannes's  horses  are  the  finest  I  have  ever  seen." 
"Umph!"  growled  Radcliffe  savagely,  "then  he'll  be 
able  to  sell  them  for  all  the  more." 

To  make  his  name  known  Hannes  used  to  send  his 
liveried  footmen  running  about  the  streets  with  di- 
rections to  put  their  heads  into  every  coach  they  met 
and  inquire,  with  accents  of  alarm,  if  Dr.  Hannes  was 
in  it.  Acting  on  these  orders,  one  of  his  fellows,  after 
looking  into  every  carriage  between  WTiitehall  and 
the  Royal  Exchange,  without  finding  his  employer, 
ran  up  Exchange  Alley  into  Garraway's  Coffee-house, 
which  was  one  of  the  great  places  of  meeting  for  the 
members  of  the  medical  profession.  (Apothecaries 
used  regularly  to  come  and  consult  the  physicians, 
while  the  latter  were  over  their  wine,  paying  only 
half  fees  for  the  advice  so  given,  without  the  patients 
being  personally  examined.  Batson's  coffee-house  in 
Corn-hill  was  another  favourite  spot  for  these  Galenic 
re-unions.  Sir  AVilliam  Blizard  being  amongst  the  lasi 
of  the  medical  authorities  who  frequented  that  hos- 
telry for  the  purpose  of  receiving  apothecaries.) 
"Gentlemen,  can  your  honours  tell  me  if  Dr.  Hannes 
is  here  ? ' '  asked  the  man,  running  into  the  very  centre 
of  the  exchange  of  medicine-men.  "\Vho  wants  Dr. 
Hannes,  fellow?"  demanded  Radcliffe,  who  happened 

to  be  present.    "Lord  A and  Lord  B ,  your 

honour!"  answered  the  man.  "No,  no,  friend,"  re- 
sponded the  doctor  slowly,  and  with  pleasant  irony, 


A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  115 

"you  are  mistaken.     Those  lords  don't  want  your 
master— 'tis  he  who  wants  them." 

But  Ilannes  made  friends  and  a  fine  income,  to  the 
deep  chagrin  of  his  contemptuous  opponent.  An  in- 
cessant feud  existed  between  the  two  men.  The  viru- 
lence of  their  mutual  animosity  may  be  estimated  by 
the  following  story.  When  the  poor  little  Duke  of 
Gloucester  was  taken  ill,  Sir  Edward  Hannes  and 
Blackmore  (famous  as  Sir  Richard  Blackmore,  the 
poet)  were  called  in  to  attend  him.  On  the  case  tak- 
ing a  fatal  turn,  Radcliffe  was  sent  for;  and  after 
roundly  charging  the  two  doctors  with  the  grossest 
mismanagement  of  a  simple  attack  of  rash,  went  on, 
"It  would  have  been  happy  for  this  nation  had  you, 
sir,  been  bred  up  a  basket-maker— and  you,  sir,  had 
remained  a  country  schoolmaster,  rather  than  have 
ventured  out  of  your  reach,  in  the  practice  of  an  art 
which  you  are  an  utter  stranger  to,  and  for  your 
blunders  in  which  you  ought  to  be  whipped  with  one 
of  your  own  rods. ' '  The  reader  will  not  see  the  force 
of  this  delicate  speech  if  he  is  not  aware  that  Hannes 
was  generally  believed  to  be  the  son  of  a  basket- 
maker,  and  Sir  Richard  Blackmore  had,  in  the  period 
of  his  early  poverty,  like  Johnson  and  Oliver  Gold- 
smith, been  a  teacher  of  boys.  Whenever  the  ' '  Amen- 
ities of  the  Faculty"  come  to  be  published,  this  con- 
sultation, on  the  last  illness  of  Jenkin  Lewis's  little 
friend,  ought  to  have  its  niche  in  the  collection. 

Towards  the  conclusion  of  his  life,  Radcliffe  said 
that,  "when  a  young  practitioner,  he  possessed 
twenty  remedies  for  every  disease;  and  at  the  close 
of  his  career  he  found  twenty  diseases  for  which  he 
had  not  one  remedy."     His  mode  of  practice,  how- 


116  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

ever,  as  far  as  anything  is  known  about  it,  at  the 
outset  was  the  same  as  that  which  he  used  at  the  con- 
clusion of  his  career.  Pure  air,  cleanliness,  and  a 
wholesome  diet  were  amonpst  his  most  important  pre- 
scriptions; though  he  was  so  far  from  running  coun- 
ter to  the  interests  of  the  druggists,  that  his  apothe- 
cary, Dandridge,  whose  business  was  almost  entirely 
confined  to  preparing  the  doctor's  medicines,  died 
worth  50,000i.  For  the  imaginary  maladies  of  his 
hjTiochondriacal  male  and  fanciful  female  patients 
he  had  the  greatest  contempt,  and  neither  respect 
for  age  or  rank,  nor  considerations  of  interest,  could 
always  restrain  him  from  insulting  such  patients. 
In  1686  he  was  appointed  physician  to  Princess  Anne 
of  Denmark,  and  was  for  some  years  a  trusted  ad- 
viser of  that  roj^al  lady;  but  he  lacked  the  compliant 
temper  and  imperturbable  suavity  requisite  for  a 
court  physician.  Shortly  after  the  death  of  Queen 
]\Iary,  the  Princess  Anne,  having  incurred  a  fit  of 
what  is  by  the  vulgar  termed  "blue  devils,"  from 
not  paying  proper  attention  to  her  diet,  sent  in  all 
haste  to  her  physician.  Radcliffe,  when  he  received 
the  imperative  summons  to  hurry  to  St.  James's  was 
sitting  over  his  bottle  in  a  tavern.  The  allurements 
of  Bacchus  were  too  strong  for  him,  and  he  delayed 
his  visit  to  the  distinguished  sufferer.  A  second  mes- 
senger arrived,  but  by  that  time  the  physician  was  so 
gloriously  ennobled  with  claret,  that  he  discarded  all 
petty  considerations  of  personal  advantage,  and  flatly 
refused  to  stir  an  inch  from  the  room  where  he  was 
experiencing  all  the  happiness  humanity  is  capable 
of.  "Tell  her  Royal  Highness,"  he  exclaimed,  bang- 
ing his  fist  on  the  table,  "that  her  distemper  is  noth- 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  117 

ing  but  the  vapours.  She's  in  as  good  state  of  health 
as  any  woman  breathing— only  she  can't  make  up 
her  mind  to  believe  it." 

The  next  morning  prudence  returned  with  sobri- 
ety; and  the  doctor  did  not  fail  to  present  himself 
at  an  early  hour  in  the  Princess's  apartment  in  St. 
James's  Palace.  To  his  consternation  he  was  stopped 
in  the  ante-room  by  an  ofScer,  and  informed  that  he 
was  dismissed  from  his  post,  which  had  already  been 
given  to  Dr.  Gibbons.  Anne  never  forgave  the  sar- 
casm about  "the  vapours."  It  so  rankled  in  her 
breast,  that,  though  she  consented  to  ask  for  the  Doc- 
tor's advice  both  for  herself  and  those  dear  to  her, 
she  never  again  held  any  cordial  communication  with 
him.  Radcliffe  tried  to  hide  the  annoyance  caused 
him  by  his  fall,  in  a  hurricane  of  insolence  towards 
his  triumphant  rival :  Nurse  Gibbons  had  gotten  a 
new  nursery— Nurse  Gibbons  was  not  to  be  envied 
his  new  acquisition— Nurse  Gibbons  was  fit  only  to 
look  after  a  woman  who  merely  fancied  herself  ill. 

Notwithstanding  this  rupture  with  the  Court,  Rad- 
cliffe continued  to  have  the  most  lucrative  practice 
in  town,  and  in  all  that  regarded  money  he  was  from 
first  to  last  a  most  lucky  man.  On  coming  to  town 
he  found  Lower,  the  Whig  physician,  sinking  in  pub- 
lic favour— and  Thomas  Short,  the  Roman  Catholic 
doctor,  about  to  drop  into  the  grave,  ^^^listle^,  Sir 
Edmund  King,  and  Blackmore  had  plenty  of  pa- 
tients. But  there  was  a  "splendid  opening,"  and  so 
cleverly  did  Radcliffe  sUp  into  it,  that  at  the  end  of 
his  first  year  in  town  he  got  twenty  guineas  per  diem. 
The  difference  in  the  value  of  money  being  taken 
into  consideration,  it  may  be  safely  affirmed  that  no 


118  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

living  physician  makes  more.  Occasionally  the  fees 
presented  to  him  were  very  large.  He  cured  Ben- 
tinck,  afterwards  Earl  of  Portland,  of  a  diarrha?a, 
and  Zulestein,  afterwards  Earl  of  Rochford,  of  an 
attack  of  congestion  of  the  hrain.  For  these  services 
William  III.  presented  him  with  500  guineas  out  of 
the  privy-purse,  and  offered  to  appoint  him  one  of 
his  physicians,  with  £200  per  annum  more  than  he 
gave  any  other  of  his  medical  officers.  Radcliffe 
pocketed  the  fee,  but  his  Jacobite  principles  pre- 
cluded him  from  accepting  the  post.  "William,  how- 
ever, notwithstanding  the  opposition  of  Bidloe  and 
the  rest  of  his  medical  servants,  held  Radcliffe  in 
such  estimation  that  he  continually  consulted  him; 
and  during  the  first  eleven  years  of  his  reign  paid 
him,  one  year  with  another,  600  guineas  per  annum. 
And  when  he  restored  to  health  "William,  Duke  of 
Gloucester  (the  Princess  of  Denmark's  son),  who  in 
his  third  year  was  attacked  with  severe  convulsions, 
Queen  ]\Iary  sent  him,  through  the  hand  of  her  Lord 
Chamberlain,  1000  guineas.  And  for  attending  the 
Earl  of  Albemarle  at  Namur  he  had  400  guineas  and 
a  diamond  ring,  1200  guineas  fi'om  the  treasury,  and 
an  offer  of  a  baronetcy  from  the  King. 

For  many  years  he  was  the  neighbour  of  Sir  God- 
frey Kneller,  in  Bow  Street.  A  dispute  that  occurred 
between  the  two  neighbours  and  friends  is  worth 
recording.  Sir  Godfrey  took  pleasure  in  his  garden, 
and  expended  large  sums  of  money  in  stocking  it  with 
exotic  plants  and  rare  flowers.  Radcliffe  also  enjoyed 
a  garden,  but  loved  his  fees  too  well  to  expend  them 
on  one  of  his  own.  He  suggested  to  Sir  Godfrey 
that  it  would  be  a  good  plan  to  insert  a  door  into  the 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  119 

boundary  wall  between  their  gardens,  so  that  on  idle 
afternoons,  when  he  had  no  patients  to  visit,  he  might 
slip  into  his  dear  friend's  pleasure-grounds.  Kneller 
readily  assented  to  this  proposition,  and  ere  a  week 
had  elapsed  the  door  was  ready  for  use.  The  plan, 
however,  had  not  been  long  acted  on  when  the  painter 
was  annoyed  by  Radcliffe's  servants  wantonly  injur- 
ing his  parterres.  After  fruitlessly  expostulating 
against  these  depredations,  the  sufferer  sent  a  mes- 
sage to  his  friend,  th;'eatening,  if  the  annoyance  re- 
curred, to  brick  up  the  wall.  "Tell  Sir  Godfrey," 
answered  Radcliffe  to  the  messenger,  "that  he  may 
do  what  he  likes  to  the  door,  so  long  as  he  does  not 
paint  it."  When  this  vulgar  jeer  was  reported  to 
KneUer,  he  replied,  with  equal  good  humour  and 
more  wit,  "Go  back  and  give  my  service  to  Dr.  Rad- 
cliffe, and  tell  him,  I'll  take  anything  from  him— but 
physic." 

Radcliffe  was  never  married,  and  professed  a  de- 
gree of  misogyny  that  was  scarcely  in  keeping  with 
his  conduct  on  certain  occasions.  His  person  was 
handsome  and  imposing,  but  his  manners  were  little 
calculated  to  please  women.  Overbearing,  truculent, 
and  abusive,  he  could  not  rest  without  wounding  the 
feelings  of  his  companions  with  harsh  jokes.  Men 
could  bear  with  him,  but  ladies  were  like  Queen  Anne 
in  vehemently  disliking  him.  King  "William  was  not 
pleased  with  his  brutal  candour  in  exclaiming,  at  the 
sight  of  the  dropsical  ancles  uncovered  for  inspec- 
tion, "I  would  not  have  your  Majesty's  legs  for  your 
three  kingdoms";  but  "William's  sister-in-law  repaid 
a  much  slighter  offence  with  life-long  animosity.  In 
1693,  however,  the  doctor  made  an  offer  to  a  citizen's 


120  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

daughter,  who  had  beauty  and  a  fortune  of  £15,000. 
As  she  was  only  twenty-four  years  of  age,  the  doctor 
was  warmly  congratulated  by  his  friends  when  he  in- 
formed them  that  he,  though  well  advanced  in  middle 
age,  had  succeeded  in  his  suit.  Before  the  wedding- 
day,  however,  it  was  discovered  that  the  health  of  the 
lady  rendered  it  incumbent  on  her  honour  that  she 
should  marry  her  father's  book-keeper.  This  mishap 
soured  the  doctor's  temper  to  the  fair  sex,  and  his 
sarcasms  at  feminine  folly  and  frailty  were  innum- 
erable. 

He  was  fond  of  declaring  that  he  wished  for  an 
Act  of  Parliament  entitling  nurses  to  the  sole  and 
entire  medical  care  of  women.  A  lady  who  consulted 
him  about  a  nervous  singing  in  the  head  was  advised 
to  "curl  her  hair  with  a  ballad."  His  scorn  of 
women  was  not  lessened  by  the  advances  of  certain 
disorderly  ladies  of  condition,  who  displayed  for  him 
that  morbid  passion  which  medical  practitioners  have 
often  to  resist  in  the  treatment  of  hysterical  patients. 
Yet  he  tried  his  luck  once  again  at  the  table  of  love. 
"There's  no  fool  so  great  as  an  old  fool."  In  the 
summer  of  1709,  Radcliffe,  then  in  his  sixtieth  year, 
started  a  new  equipage;  and  having  arrayed  himself 
in  the  newest  mode  of  foppery,  threw  all  the  town 
into  fits  of  laughter  by  paying  his  addresses,  with 
the  greatest  possible  publicity,  to  a  lady  who  pos- 
sessed every  requisite  charm— (youth,  beauty, 
wealth)— except  a  tenderness  for  her  aged  suitor. 
Again  was  there  an  unlucky  termination  to  the  doc- 
tor's love,  which  Steele,  in  No.  44  of  The  Taller,  rid- 
iculed in  the  following  manner:— 

"This  day,  passing  through  Covent  Garden,  I  was 


A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  121 

stopped  in  the  Piazza  by  Pacolet,  to  observe  what 
he  called  The  Triumph  of  Love  and  Youth.  I  turned 
to  the  object  he  pointed  at,  and  there  I  saw  a  gay 
gilt  chariot,  drawn  by  fresh  prancing  horses,  the 
coachman  with  a  new  cockade,  and  the  lacqueys  with 
insolence  and  plenty  in  their  countenances.  I  asked 
immediately,  'WTiat  young  heir,  or  lover,  owned  that 
glittering  equipage?'  But  my  companion  inter- 
rupted, 'Do  not  you  see  there  the  mourning 
iEsculapius  ? '  '  The  mourning  ? '  said  I.  '  Yes,  Isaac, ' 
said  Pacolet,  "he  is  in  deep  mourning,  and  is  the 
languishing,  hopeless  lover  of  the  divine  Hebe,  the 
emblem  of  Youth  and  Beauty.  That  excellent  and 
learned  sage  you  behold  in  that  furniture  is  the 
strongest  instance  imaginable  that  love  is  the  most 
powerful  of  all  things. 

"  'You  are  not  so  ignorant  as  to  be  a  stranger  to 
the  character  of  .-Esculapius,  as  the  patron  and  most 
successful  of  all  who  profess  the  Art  of  Medicine. 
But  as  most  of  his  operations  are  owing  to  a  natural 
sagacity  or  impulse,  he  has  very  little  troubled  him- 
self with  the  Doctrine  of  Drugs,  but  has  always  given 
Nature  more  room  to  help  herself  than  any  of  her 
learned  assistants ;  and  consequently  has  done  great^jr 
wonders  than  in  the  power  of  Art  to  perform;  for 
which  reason  he  is  half  deified  by  the  people,  and 
has  ever  been  courted  by  all  the  world,  just  as  if  he 
were  a  seventh  son. 

"  'It  happened  that  the  charming  Hebe  was  re- 
duc'd,  by  a  long  and  violent  fever,  to  the  most  ex- 
treme danger  of  Death;  and  when  aU  skill  failed, 
they  sent  for  ^-Esculapius.  The  renowned  artist  was 
touched  with  the  deepest  compassion,  to  see  the  faded 


122  A  BOOK  .VBOUT  DOCTOKS. 

charms  and  faint  bloom  of  Hebe ;  and  had  a  generous 
concern,  too,  in  beholding  a  struggle,  not  between 
Life,  but  rather  between  Youth,  and  Death.  All  his 
skill  and  his  passion  tended  to  the  recovery  of  Ilebe, 
beautiful  even  in  sickness;  but,  alas!  the  unhappy 
physician  knew  not  that  in  all  his  care  he  was  only 
sharpening  darts  for  his  own  destruction.  In  a  word, 
his  fortune  was  the  same  with  that  of  the  statuary 
who  fell  in  love  with  an  image  of  his  own  making; 
and  the  unfortunate  /Esculapius  is  become  the  pa- 
tient of  her  whom  he  lately  recovered.  Long  before 
this,  .Ssculapius  was  far  gone  in  the  unnecessary  and 
superfluous  amusements  of  old  age,  in  the  increase 
of  unwieldy  stores,  and  the  provision  in  the  midst 
of  an  incapacity  of  enjoyment,  of  what  he  had  for  a 
supply  of  more  wants  than  he  had  calls  for  in  Youth 
itself.  But  these  low  considerations  are  now  no  more ; 
and  Love  has  taken  place  of  Avarice,  or  rather  is 
become  an  Avarice  of  another  kind,  which  still  urges 
him  to  pursue  what  he  does  not  want.  But  behold 
the  metamorphosis:  the  anxious  mean  cares  of  an 
usurer  are  turned  into  the  languishments  and  com- 
plaints of  a  lover.  "Behold,"  says  the  aged 
^Esculapius,  "I  submit;  I  own,  great  Love,  thy  em- 
pire. Pity,  Hebe,  the  fop  you  have  made.  What 
have  I  to  do  with  gilding  but  on  Pills?  Yet,  0  Fate ! 
for  thee  I  sit  amidst  a  crowd  of  painted  deities  on 
my  chariot,  buttoned  in  gold,  clasp  'd  in  gold,  without 
having  any  value  for  that  beloved  metal,  but  as  it 
adorns  the  person  and  laces  the  hat  of  the  dying  lover. 
I  ask  not  to  live,  0  Hebe !  Give  me  but  gentle  death. 
Eutnanasia,  Euthanasia!  that  is  all  I  implore."' 
When  /Esculapius  had  finished  his  complaint,  Pacolet 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  123 

went  on  in  deep  morals  on  the  uncertainty  of  riches, 
with  this  remarkable  explanation— '0  wealth!  how 
impatient  art  thou !  And  how  little  dost  thou  supply 
us  with  real  happiness,  when  the  usurer  himself  can- 
not forget  thee,  for  the  love  of  what  is  foreign  to  his 
felicity,  as  thou  art ! '  " 

Seven  days  after  the  Tatler  resumed  the  attack, 
but  with  less  happy  effect.  In  this  picture,  the  jus- 
tice of  which  was  not  questioned,  even  by  the  Doc- 
tor's admirers,  the  avarice  of  the  veteran  is  not  less 
insisted  on  as  the  basis  of  his  character,  than  his 
amorousness  is  displayed  as  a  ludicrous  freak  of 
vanity.  Indeed,  love  of  money  was  the  master-defect 
of  Radcliffe's  disposition.  Without  a  child,  or  a 
prospect  of  offspring,  he  screwed  and  scraped  in 
every  dii-eetion.  Even  his  debaucheries  had  an  alloy 
of  discomfort  that  does  not  customarily  mingle  in  the 
dissipations  of  the  rich.  The  flavour  of  the  money 
each  bottle  cost  gave  ungrateful  smack  to  his  wine. 
He  had  numerous  poor  relations,  of  whom  he  took, 
during  his  life,  little  or  no  notice.  Even  his  sisters 
he  kept  at  arm's  distance,  lest  they  should  show  their 
affection  for  him  by  dipping  their  hands  in  his  pock- 
ets. It  is  true,  he  provided  liberally  for  them  at  his 
death— leaving  to  the  one  (a  married  lady— Mrs. 
Hannah  Redshaw)  a  thousand  a  year  for  life,  and  to 
the  other  (a  spinster  lady)  an  income  of  half  that 
amount  as  long  as  she  lived.  But  that  he  treated 
them  \vith  unbrotherly  neglect  there  is  no  doubt. 

After  his  decease,  a  letter  was  found  in  his  closet, 
directed  to  his  unmarried  sister,  Millicent  Radcliffe, 
in  which,  with  contrition,  and  much  pathos,  he  bids 
her  farewell.    "You  will  find,"  says  he,  in  that  epis- 


124  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

tie,  "by  my  will  that  I  have  taken  better  care  of  you 
than  perhaps  you  might  expect  from  my  former 
treatment  of  you;  for  which,  with  my  dying  breath, 
I  most  heartily  ask  pardon.  I  had  indeed  acted  the 
brother's  part  much  better,  in  making  a  handsome 
settlement  on  you  while  living,  than  after  my  de- 
cease; and  can  plead  nothing  in  excuse,  but  that  the 
love  of  money,  which  I  have  emphatically  known  to 
be  the  root  of  all  evil,  was  too  predominant  over  me. 
Though,  I  hope,  I  have  made  some  amends  for  that 
odious  sin  of  covetousness,  in  my  last  dispositions  of 
those  worldly  goods  which  it  pleased  the  great  Dis- 
penser of  Providence  to  bless  me  with." 

WTiat  made  this  meanness  of  disposition  in  money 
mattei-s  the  more  remarkable  was,  that  he  was  capable 
of  occasional  munificence,  on  a  scale  almost  beyond 
his  wealth,  and  also  of  a  stoical  fortitude  under  any 
reverse  of  fortune  that  chanced  to  deprive  him  of 
some  of  his  beloved  guineas. 

In  the  year  1704,  at  a  general  collection  for  prop- 
agating the  Gospel  in  foreign  parts,  he  settled  on 
the  Society  established  for  that  purpose  £50  per 
annum  for  ever.  And  this  noble  gift  he  unostenta- 
tiously made  under  an  assumed  name.  In  the  same 
year  he  presented  £520  to  the  Bishop  of  Norwich, 
to  be  distributed  among  the  poor  non-juring  clergy; 
and  this  donation  he  also  desired  should  be  kept  a 
secret  from  the  world. 

His  liberality  to  Oxford  was  far  from  being  all  of 
the  post-mortem  sort.  In  1687  he  presented  the 
chapel  of  University  College  with  an  east  window, 
representing,  in  stained  glass,  the  Nativity,  and  hav- 
ing the  following  inscription:— "D.D.    Johan    Rad- 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  125 

cliffe,  M.D.,  hujus  Collegii  quondam  Soeius,  Anno 
Domini  mdclxxxvii."  In  1707  he  gave  Sprat,  Bishop 
of  Rochester,  bills  for  £300,  drawn  under  the  assumed 
name  of  Francis  Andrews,  on  Waldegrave  the  gold- 
smith, of  Russell  Street,  Covent  Garden,  for  the  re- 
lief of  distressed  Scotch  Episcopal  clergy. 

As  another  instance  of  how  his  niggard  nature 
could  allow  him  to  do  good  by  stealth,  and  blush  to 
find  it  fame,  his  liberality  to  James  Drake,  the  Tory 
writer,  may  be  mentioned.  Drake  was  a  physician, 
as  well  as  a  political  author.  As  the  latter,  he  was 
well  liked,  as  the  former  he  was  honestly  hated  by 
Radcliffe.  Two  of  a  trade— where  one  of  the  two  is 
a  John  Radcliffe — can  never  agree.  Each  of  the  two 
doctors  had  done  his  utmost  to  injure  the  reputation 
of  the  other.  But  when  Drake,  broken  in  circum- 
stances by  a  political  persecution,  was  in  sore  dis- 
tress from  want  of  money,  Radcliffe  put  fifty  guineas 
into  a  lady's  hands,  and  begged  her  to  convey  it  to 
Drake.  "Let  him,"  said  Radcliffe,  with  the  delicacy 
of  a  fine  heart,  "by  no  means  be  told  whence  it  comes. 
He  is  a  gentleman,  and  has  often  done  his  best  to 
hurt  me.  He  could,  therefore,  by  no  means  brook 
the  receipt  of  a  benefit  from  a  person  whom  he  had 
used  all  possible  means  to  make  an  enemy." 

After  such  instances  of  Ratcliffe's  generosity,  it 
may  seem  unnecessary  to  give  more  proofs  of  the  ex- 
istence of  that  quality,  disguised  though  it  was  by 
miserly  habits.  His  friend  Nutley,  a  loose  rollicking 
gentleman  about  town,  a  barrister  without  practice, 
a  man  of  good  family,  and  no  fortune,  a  jovial  dog, 
with  a  jest  always  on  his  lips,  wine  in  his  head,  and 
a  death's-head   grinning  over   each  shoulder    [such 


126  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

bachelors  may  still  be  found  in  London] ,  was  in  this 
case  the  object  of  the  doctor's  benevolence.  Driven 
by  duns  and  tippling  to  the  borders  of  distraction, 
Nutley  crept  out  of  his  chambers  under  the  cover  of 
night  to  the  "Mitre  Tavern,"  and  called  for  "a  bot- 
tle." "A  bottle"  with  Nutley  meant  "many  bot- 
tles." The  end  of  it  was  that  the  high-spirited  gen- 
tleman fell  down  in  a  condition  of well!  in  a 

condition  that  Templars,  in  this  age  of  earnest  pur- 
pose and  decent  morals,  would  blush  to  be  caught  in. 
Mr.  Nutley  was  taken  hold  of  by  the  waiters,  and 
carried  up-stairs  to  bed. 

The  next  morning  the  merry  fellow  is  in  the  sad- 
dest of  all  possible  humours.  The  memory  of  a  few 
little  bills,  the  holders  of  which  are  holding  a  parlia- 
ment on  his  stair-case  in  Pump-eourt ;  the  recollection 
that  he  has  not  a  guinea  left— either  to  pacify  those 
creditors  with,  or  to  use  in  paying  for  the  wine  con- 
sumed over  night;  a  depressing  sense  that  the  prom- 
inent features  of  civilized  existence  are  tax-gatherers 
and  sheriff's  ofScers;  a  head  that  seems  to  be  falling 
over  one  side  of  the  pillow,  whilst  the  eyes  roll  out 
on  the  other;— all  these  afflict  poor  Mr.  Nutley!  A 
knock  at  the  dooi',  and  the  landlady  enters.  The 
landlady  is  the  Widow  Watts,  daughter  of  the  widow 
Bowles,  also  in  the  same  line.  As  now,  so  a  hundred 
and  fifty  years  ago,  ladies  in  licensed  victualling  cir- 
cles played  tricks  with  their  husbands'  night-caps— 
killed  them  with  kindness,  and  reigned  in  their  stead. 
The  widow  Watts  has  a  sneaking  fondness  for  poor 
Mr.  Nutley,  and  is  much  affected  when,  in  answer  to 
her  inquiry  how  "his  honour  feels  his-self,"  he  begins 
to  sob  like  a  child,  narrate  the  troubles  of  his  in- 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  127 

fancy,  the  errors  of  his  youth,  and  the  sorrows  of  his 
riper  age.  Mistress  Watts  is  alarmed.  Only  to  think 
of  Mr.  Nutley  going  on  like  that,  talking  of  his  blessed 
mother  who  had  been  dead  these  twenty  years,  and 
vowing  he'd  kill  himself,  because  he  is  an  outcast, 
and  no  better  than  a  disgrace  to  his  family.  "To 
think  of  it!  and  only  yesterday  he  were  the  top  of 
company,  and  would  have  me  drink  his  own  honour- 
able health  in  a  glass  of  his  own  wine."  Mistress 
Watts  sends  straightway  for  Squire  Nutley 's  friend, 
the  Doctor.  When  Radcliffe  makes  his  appearance, 
he  sees  the  whole  case  at  a  glance,  rallies  Billy  Nut- 
ley about  his  rascally  morals,  estimates  his  assertion 
that  "it's  only  his  liver  a  little  out  of  order"  exactly 
at  its  worth,  and  takes  his  leave  shortly,  saying  to 
himself,  "If  poor  Billy  could  only  be  freed  from  the 
depression  caused  by  his  present  pecuniary  difficul- 
ties, he  would  escape  for  this  once  a  return  of  the 
deliri  .  .  ."  At  the  end  of  another  half  hour,  a 
goldsmith's  man  enters  the  bed- room,  and  puts  into 
Nutley 's  hand  a  letter  and  a  bag  of  gold  containing 
200  guineas.  The  epistle  is  from  Radcliffe,  beg- 
ging his  friend  to  accept  the  money,  and  to  al- 
low the  donor  to  send  him  in  a  few  days  300 
more  of  the  same  coins.  Such  was  the  physician's 
prescription,  iu  dispensing  which  he  condescended  to 
act  as  his  own  apothecary.  Bravo,  doctor!— who  of 
us  shall  say  which  of  the  good  deeds— thy  gift  to 
Billy  Nutley  or  thy  princely  bequest  to  Oxford— has 
the  better  right  to  be  regarded  as  the  offspring  of 
sincere  benevolence?  Some— and  let  no  "fie!"  be 
cried  upon  them — will  find  in  this  story  more  to  make 
them  love  thy  memory  than  they  have  ever  found  in 


128  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

that  noble  library  whose  dome  stands  up  amidst  the 
towers,  and  steeples,  and  sacred  walls  of  beloved 
Oxford. 

It  would  not  be  hard  to  say  which  of  the  two  gifts 
has  done  the  greater  good.  Poor  Will  Nutley  took 
his  500  guineas,  and  had  "more  bottles,"  went  a  few 
more  times  to  the  theatres  in  lace  and  velvet  and 
brocade,  roared  out  at  a  few  more  drinking  bouts, 
and  was  carried  off  by  [his  biographer  calls  it  "a 
violent  fever"]  in  the  twenty-ninth  year  of  his  age. 
And  possibly  since  Willy  Nutley  was  Willy  Nutley, 
and  no  one  else,  this  was  the  best  possible  termina- 
tion for  him.  That  Radeliffe,  the  head  of  a  grave 
profession,  and  a  man  of  fifty-seven  years  of  age, 
should  have  conceived  an  enthusiastic  friendship  for 
a  youngster  of  half  his  age,  is  a  fact  that  shows  us 
one  of  the  consequences  of  the  tavern  life  of  our 
great-grandfathers.  It  puts  us  in  mind  of  how  Field- 
ing, ere  he  had  a  beard,  burst  into  popularity  with 
the  haunters  of  coffee-houses.  When  roist'^-"ing  was 
in  fashion,  a  young  man  had  many  chances  which  he 
no  longer  possesses.  After  the  theatres  were  closed, 
he  reeled  into  the  hostels  of  the  town,  singing  snatches 
with  the  blithe,  clear  voice  of  youth,  laughing  and 
jesting  with  all  around,  and  frequently  amongst  that 
"all"  he  came  in  contact  with  the  highest  and  most 
powerful  men  of  the  time.  A  boy-adventurer  could 
display  his  wit  and  quality  to  statesmen  and  leaders 
of  all  sorts;  whereas  now  he  must  wait  years  before 
he  is  even  introduced  to  them,  and  years  more  ere  he 
gets  an  invitation  to  their  formal  dinners,  at  which 
Barnes  Newcome  cuts  as  brilliant  a  figure  as  the  best 
and  the  strongest. 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  129 

Throughout  his  life  Radcliffe  was  a  staunch  and 
manly  Jacobite.  He  was  for  "the  king";  but  neither 
loyalty  nor  interest  could  bind  him  to  higher  con- 
siderations than  those  of  attachment  to  the  individual 
he  regarded  as  the  rightful  head  of  the  realm.  In 
1688,  when  Obadiah  Walker  tried  to  wheedle  him 
into  the  folly  of  becoming  a  Romanist,  the  attempt 
at  perversion  proved  a  signal  failure.  Nothing  can 
be  more  truly  manly  than  his  manner  of  rejecting 
the  wily  advances  of  the  proselytizing  pervert.  "The 
advantages  you  propose  to  me,"  he  writes,  "may  be 
very  great,  for  all  that  I  know;  God  Almighty  can 
do  very  much  and  so  can  the  king;  but  you'll  pardon 
me  if  I  cease  to  speak  like  a  physician  for  once,  and, 
with  an  air  of  gravity,  am  very  apprehensive  that  I 
may  anger  the  one  in  being  too  complaisant  to  the 
other.  Tou  cannot  call  this  pinning  my  faith  to  any 
man's  sleeve;  those  that  know  me  are  too  well  ap- 
prized of  my  quite  contrary  tendency.  As  I  never 
flattered  a  man  myself,  so  'tis  my  firm  resolution 
never  to  be  wheedled  out  of  my  real  sentiments— 
which  are,  that  since  it  has  been  my  good  fortune 
to  be  educated  according  to  the  usage  of  the  Church 
of  England,  established  by  law,  I  shall  never  make 
myself  so  unhappy  as  to  shame  my  teachers  and  in- 
structors by  departing  from  what  I  have  imbibed 
from  them." 

Thus  was  Walker  treated  when  he  abused  his  posi- 
tion as  head  of  Univei-sity  College.  But  when  the 
foolish  man  was  deprived  of  his  oflSce,  he  found  a 
good  friend  in  him  whom  he  had  tried  to  seduce  from 
the  Church  in  which  he  had  been  reared.  Prom  the 
time  of  his  first  coming  to  London  from  Oxford,  on 

4—9 


130  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

the  abdication  of  James  the  Second,  up  to  the  time 
of  his  death,  Walker  subsisted  on  a  handsome  allow- 
ance made  to  him  out  of  Radcliffe's  purse.  When, 
also,  the  discarded  principal  died,  it  was  the  doctor 
who  gave  him  an  honourable  interment  in  Pancras 
churchyard,  and  years  afterwards  erected  a  monu- 
ment to  his  memory. 

As  year,  passed  on,  without  the  restitution  of  the 
proscribed  males  of  the  Stuart  House,  Radcliffe's 
political  feelings  became  more  bitter.  He  was  too 
cautious  a  man  to  commit  himself  in  any  plot  having 
for  its  object  a  change  of  djmasty;  but  his  ill-humour 
at  the  existing  state  of  things  vented  itself  in  con- 
tinual sarcasms  against  the  chiefs  of  the  Whig  party 
with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  He  professed  that  he 
did  not  wish  for  practice  amongst  the  faction  to 
which  he  was  opposed.  He  had  rather  only  preserve 
the  lives  of  those  citizens  who  were  loyal  to  their 
king.  One  of  the  immediate  results  of  this  affectation 
was  increased  popularity  with  his  political  antago- 
nists. WTienever  a  Whig  leader  was  dangerously  ill, 
his  friends  were  sure  to  feel  that  his  only  chance  of 
safety  rested  on  the  ministrations  of  the  Jacobite 
doctor.  Radcliffe  would  be  sent  for,  and  after  swear- 
ing a  score  of  times  that  nothing  should  induce  him 
to  comply  with  the  summons,  would  make  his  appear- 
ance at  the  sick-bed,  where  he  would  sometimes  tell 
the  sufferer  that  the  devil  would  have  no  mercy  on 
those  who  put  constitutional  governments  above  the 
divine  right  of  kings.  If  the  patient  recovered,  of 
course  his  cure  was  attributed  to  the  Tory  physician ; 
and  if  death  was  the  result,  the  same  cause  was 
pointed  to. 


A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  131 

It  might  be  fancied  that,  rather  than  incur  a  charge 
of  positively  killing  his  political  antagonists,  Ead- 
cliffe  would  have  left  them  to  their  fates.  But  this 
plan  would  have  served  him  the  reverse  of  well.  If 
he  failed  to  attend  a  WTiig's  death-bed  to  which  he 
had  been  summoned,  the  death  was  all  the  same  at- 
tributed to  him.  "He  might,"  exclaimed  the  indig- 
nant survivors,  "have  saved  poor  Tom  if  he  had 
liked ;  only  poor  Tom  was  a  "Whig,  and  so  he  left  him 
to  die."  He  was  charged  alike  with  killing  Queen 
Mary,  whom  he  did  attend  in  her  dying  illness — and 
Queen  Anne,  whom  he  didn't. 

The  reader  of  the  Harleian  MS.  of  Burnet's  "His- 
tory" is  amused  with  the  following  passage,  which 
does  not  appear  in  the  printed  editions: — "I  will 
not  enter  into  another  p^o\^nce,  nor  go  out  of  my  own 
profession,  and  so  wiU  say  no  more  of  the  physician's 
part,  but  that  it  was  universally  condemned;  so  that 
the  Queen's  death  was  imputed  to  the  unskilfulness 
and  wilfulness  of  Dr  Radcliffe,  an  impious  and 
vicious  man,  who  hated  the  Queen  much,  but  virtue 
and  religion  more.  He  was  a  professed  Jacobite,  and 
was,  by  many,  thought  a  very  bad  physician;  but 
others  cried  him  up  to  the  highest  degree  imaginable. 
He  was  called  for,  and  it  appeared  but  too  evident 
that  his  opinion  was  depended  on.  Other  physicians 
were  called  when  it  was  too  late;  aU  symptoms  were 
bad,  yet  still  the  Queen  felt  herself  well." 

Radcliffe 's  negative  murder  of  Queen  Anne  was 
yet  more  amusing  than  his  positive  destruction  of 
Mary.  "When  Queen  Anne  was  almost  in  extremis, 
Radcliffe  was  sent  for.  The  Queen,  though  she 
never  forgave  him  for  his  drunken  ridicule  of  her 


132  A   BOOK    .VBOUT  DOCTORS. 

vapours,  had  an  exalted  opinion  of  his  professional 
talents,  and  had,  more  than  once,  winked  at  her  ladies, 
consulting  him  about  the  health  of  their  royal  mis- 
tress. Now  that  death  was  at  hand,  Ladj^  JIasham 
sent  a  summons  for  the  doctor;  but  he  was  at  Car- 
shalton,  sick  of  his  dying  illness,  and  returned  answer 
that  it  would  be  impossible  for  him  to  leave  his  coun- 
try-seat and  wait  on  her  ^Majesty.  Such  was  the  ab- 
surd and  superstitious  belief  in  his  mere  presence, 
that  the  Queen  was  populai'ly  pictured  as  having  died 
because  he  was  not  present  to  see  her  draw  her  last 
breath.  ^Miom  he  liked  he  could  kill,  and  whom  he 
liked  could  keep  alive  and  well.  Even  Arbuthnot,  a 
brother  physician,  was  so  tinctured  with  the  popular 
prejudice,  that  he  could  gravely  tell  Swift  of  the 
pleasure  Radcliffe  had  "in  preserving  my  Lord  Chief 
Justice  Holt's  wife,  whom  he  attended  out  of  spite 
to  her  husband,  who  wished  her  dead." 

It  makes  one  smile  to  read  Charles  Ford's  letter 
to  the  sarcastic  Dean  on  the  subject  of  the  Queen's 
last  illness.  "She  continued  ill  the  whole  day.  In 
the  evening  I  spoke  to  Dr  Arbuthnot,  and  he  told  me 
that  he  did  not  think  her  distemper  was  desperate. 
Radcliffe  was  sent  for  to  Carshalton  about  noon,  by 
order  of  council;  but  said  he  had  taken  physic  and 
coiild  not  come.  In  all  probahility  he  had  saved  her 
life;  for  I  am  told  the  late  Lord  Gower  had  been  often 
in  the  condition  with  the  gout  in  the  head,  and  Rad- 
cliffe kept  him  alive  many  years  after."  The  author 
of  Gulliver  must  have  grinned  as  he  read  this  sen- 
tence. It  was  strange  stuff  to  write  about  "that 
puppy  Radcliffe"  (as  the  Dean  calls  the  physician 
in  his  journal  to  Stella)  to  the  man  who  coolly  sent 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.         '  133 

out  word  to  a  Dublin  mob  that  he  had  put  off  an 
eclipse  to  a  more  suitable  time.  The  absurdity  of 
Ford's  letter  is  heightened  by  the  fact  that  it  was 
written  before  the  Queen's  death.  It  is  dated  July 
31,  1714,  and  concludes  with  the  following  post- 
script:—"The  Queen  is  something  better,  and  the 
council  again  adjourned  till  eight  in  the  morning." 
Surely  the  accusation,  then,  of  negative  woman- 
slaughter  was  preferred  somewhat  prematurely.  The 
next  day,  however,  the  Queen  died ;  and  then  arose  a 
magnificent  hubbub  of  indignation  against  the  im- 
pious doctor.  The  poor  man  himself  sinking  into 
the  grave,  was  at  that  country-seat  where  he  had  en- 
tertained his  medical  friends  with  so  many  noisy 
orgies.  But  the  cries  for  vengeance  reached  him  in 
his  retreat.  "Give  us  back  our  ten  days!"  screamed 
the  rabble  of  London  round  Lord  Chesterfield's  car- 
riage. "Give  us  back  our  Queen!"  was  the  howl 
directed  against  Radcliffe.  The  accused  was  a  mem- 
ber of  the  House  of  Commons,  having  been  elected 
M.P.  for  the  town  of  Buckingham  in  the  previous 
year;  and  positively  a  member  (one  of  Radcliffe 's 
intimate  personal  acquaintances)  moved  that  the 
physician  should  be  summoned  to  attend  in  his  place 
and  be  censured  for  not  attending  her  late  Majesty. 
To  a  friend  the  doctor  wrote  from  Carshalton  on 
August  7,  1714:— "Dear  Sir,— I  could  not  have 
thought  so  old  an  acquaintance,  and  so  good  a  friend 
as  Sir  John  always  professed  himself,  would  have 
made  such  a  motion  against  me.  God  knows  my  will 
to  do  her  Majesty  any  service  has  ever  got  the  start 
of  my  ability,  and  I  have  nothing  that  gives  me 
greater  anxiety  and  trouble  than  the  death  of  that 


Tdi  ■        A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

great  and  glorious  Princess.  I  must  do  that  justice 
to  the  physicians  that  attended  her  in  her  illness, 
from  a  sight  of  the  method  that  was  taken  for  her 
preservation,  transmitted  to  me  by  Dr  Mead,  as  to 
declare  nothing  was  omitted  for  her  preservation; 
but  the  people  about  her  (the  plagues  of  Egypt  fall 
upon  them!)  put  it  out  of  the  power  of  physick  to 
be  of  any  benefit  to  her.  I  know  the  nature  of  attend- 
ing crowned  heads  to  their  last  moments  too  well  to 
be  fond  of  waiting  upon  them,  without  being  sent 
for  by  a  proper  authority.  You  have  heard  of  par- 
dons signed  for  physicians  before  a  sovereign's  de- 
mise. However,  as  ill  as  I  was,  I  would  have  went  to 
the  Queen  in  a  horse-litter,  had  either  her  JIajesty, 
or  those  in  commission  next  to  her,  commanded  me  so 
to  do.  You  may  tell  Sir  John  as  much,  and  assure 
him,  from  me,  that  his  zeal  for  her  Majesty  will  not 
excuse  his  ill  usage  of  a  friend  uho  has  drunk  many 
a  hundred  bottles  with  him,  and  cannot,  even  after 
this  breach  of  good  understanding,  that  was  ever  pre- 
served between  us,  but  have  a  very  good  esteem  for 
him." 

So  strong  was  the  feeling  against  the  doctor,  that 
a  set  of  maniacs  at  large  formed  a  plan  for  his  as- 
sassination. Fortunately,  however,  the  plot  was  made 
known  to  him  in  the  following  letter:— 

"Doctor,— Tho'  I  am  no  friend  of  yours,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  one  that  could  wish  your  destruction 
in  a  legal  way,  for  not  preventing  the  death  of  our 
most  excellent  Queen,  whom  you  had  it  in  your 
power  to  save,  yet  I  have  such  an  aversion  to  the 
taking  away  men's  lives  unfairly,  as  to  acquaint  you 
that  if  you  go  to  meet  the  gentlemen  you  have  ap- 


A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  135 

pointed  to  dine  with  at  the  'Greyhound,'  in  Croydon, 
on  Thursday  next,  you  will  be  most  certainly  mur- 
thered.  I  am  one  of  the  persons  engaged  in  the  con- 
spiracy, with  twelve  more,  who  are  resolved  to  sacri- 
fice you  to  the  Ghost  of  her  late  Majesty,  that  cries 
aloud  for  Mood;  therefore,  neither  stir  out  of  doors 
that  day,  nor  any  other,  nor  think  of  exchanging 
your  present  abode  for  your  house  at  Hammersmith, 
since  there  and  everywhere  else  we  shall  be  in  quest 
of  you.  I  am  touched  with  remorse,  and  give  you 
this  notice;  but  take  care  of  yourself,  lest  I  repent 
of  it,  and  give  proofs  of  so  doing,  by  having  it  in  my 
power  to  destroy  you,  who  am  your  sworn  enemy. 
-N.  G." 

That  thirteen  men  could  have  been  found  to  med- 
itate such  a  ridiculous  atrocity  is  so  incredible,  that 
one  is  inclined  to  suspect  a  hoax  in  this  epistle. 
Eadcliffe,  however,  did  not  see  the  letter  in  that  light. 
Panic-struck,  he  kept  himself  a  close  prisoner  to  his 
house  and  its  precincts,  though  he  was  very  desirous 
of  paying  another  visit  to  London — the  monotony  of 
his  rural  seclusion  being  broken  only  by  the  custom- 
ary visits  of  his  professional  associates  who  came 
down  to  comfort  and  drink  with  him.  The  end,  how- 
ever, was  fast  approaching.  The  maladies  under 
which  he  suffered  were  exacerbated  by  mental  dis- 
quiet; and  his  powers  suddenly  failing  him,  he  ex- 
pired on  the  1st  of  November,  1714,  just  three  months 
after  the  death  of  the  murdered  Queen,  of  whose 
vapours  he  had  spoken  so  disrespectfully. 

His  original  biographer  (from  whose  work  all  his 
many  memoirs  have  been  taken)  tells  the  world  that 


136  A  BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

the  great  physician  '■'fell  a  victim  to  the  ingratitude 
of  a  thankless  world,  and  the  fury  of  the  gout." 

Radcliffe  was  an  ignorant  man,  but  shrewd  enough 
to  see  that  in  the  then  existing  state  of  medical  sci- 
ence the  book-learning  of  the  Faculty  could  be  but 
of  little  service  to  him.  He  was  so  notoriously  defi- 
cient in  the  literature  of  his  profession,  that  his 
warmest  admirers  made  merry  about  it.  Garth  hap- 
pily observed  that  for  Radcliffe  to  leave  a  library 
was  as  if  a  eunuch  sliould  found  a  seraglio.  Nor  was 
Radcliffe  ashamed  to  admit  his  lack  of  lore.  Indeed, 
he  was  proud  of  it;  and  on  the  inquiry  being  made 
by  Bathurst,  the  head  of  Trinity  College,  Oxford, 
where  his  stuc^y  was,  he  pointed  to  a  few  vials,  a  skele- 
ton, and  an  herbal,  and  answered,  "This  is  Rad- 
cliffe's  library."  Mead,  who  rose  into  the  fii'st  fa- 
vour of  the  town  as  the  doctor  retired  from  it,  was  an 
excellent  scholar;  but  far  from  assuming  on  that 
ground  a  superiority  to  his  senior,  made  it  the  means 
of  paying  him  a  graceful  compliment.  The  first  time 
that  Radcliffe  called  on  Mead  when  in  town  he  found 
his  young  friend  reading  Hippocrates. 

"Do  you  read  Hippocrates  in  Greek?"  demanded 
the  visitor. 

"Yes,"  replied  Mead,  timidly  fearing  his  scholar- 
ship would  offend  the  great  man. 

"I  never  read  him  in  my  life,"  responded  Rad- 
cliffe, sullenly. 

"You,  sir,"  was  the  rejoinder,  "have  no  occasion 
—you  are  Hippocrates  himself." 

A  man  who  could  manufacture  flattery  so  promptly 
and  courageously  deserved  to  get  on.  Radcliffe  swal- 
lowed the  fly,  and  was  glad  to  be  the  prey  of  the  ex- 


A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  137 

pert  angler.  Only  the  day  before,  Mead  had  thrown 
in  his  ground-bait.  As  a  promising  young  man,  Rad- 
eliflfe  had  asked  him  to  a  dinner-party  at  Carsbalton, 
with  the  hospitable  resolve  of  reducing  such  a  prom- 
ising young  man  to  a  state  of  intoxication,  in  the 
presence  of  the  assembled  elders  of  his  profession. 
Mead,  however,  was  not  to  be  so  managed.  He  had 
strong  nerves,  and  was  careful  to  drink  as  little  as 
he  could  without  attracting  attention  by  his  absti- 
nence. The  consequence  was  that  Mead  saw  magnate 
after  magnate  disappear  under  the  table,  just  as  he 
had  before  seen  magnum  after  magnum  disappear 
above  it ;  and  still  he  retained  his  self-possession.  At 
last  he  and  his  host  were  the  only  occupants  of  the 
banqueting-room  left  in  a  non-recumbent  position. 
Radcliffe  was  delighted  with  his  youthful  acquaint- 
ance—loved him  almost  as  well  as  he  had  loved  Billy 
Nutley. 

"Mead,"criedtheenthusiastic  veteran  to  the  young 
man,  who  anyhow  had  not  fallen  from  his  chair,  "you 
are  a  rising  man.    You  will  succeed  me." 

"That,  sir,  is  impossible,"  Mead  adroitly  answered; 
"You  are  Alexander  the  Great,  and  no  one  can  suc- 
ceed Radcliffe;  to  succeed  to  one  of  his  kingdoms  is 
the  utmost  of  my  ambition." 

Charmed  with  the  reply,  Radcliffe  exclaimed, 

"By ,  I'll  recommend  you  to  my  patients." 

The  promise  was  kept;  and  Mead  endeavoured  to 
repay  the  worldly  advancement  with  spiritual  coun- 
cil. "I  remember,"  says  Kennett  {vide  Lansdowne 
MSS.,  Brit.  Mus.),  "what  Dr  Mede  has  told  to  sev- 
eral of  his  friends,  that  he  fell  much  into  the  favour 
of  Dr  Radcliffe  a  few  years  before  his  death,  and 


138  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

visited  him  often  at  Carshalton,  where  he  observed 
upon  occasion  that  there  was  no  Bible  to  be  found 
in  the  house.  Dr  Mede  had  a  mind  to  supply  that 
defect,  without  taking  any  notice  of  it ;  and  therefore 
one  day  carried  down  with  him  a  very  beautiful  Bible 
that  he  had  lately  bought,  which  had  lain  in  a  closet 
of  King  \\"illiam  for  his  Majesty's  own  use,  and  left 
it  as  a  curiosity  that  he  had  picked  up  by  the  way. 
"When  Dr  Mede  made  the  last  visit  to  him  he  found 
that  Dr  R.  had  read  in  it  as  far  as  the  middle  of  the 
Book  of  Exodus,  from  whence  it  might  be  inferred 
that  he  had  never  before  read  the  Scriptures;  as  I 
doubt  must  be  inferred  of  Dr  Linacre,  from  the  ac- 
count given  by  Sir  John  Cheke." 

The  allusion  to  "the  kingdom  of  Alexander  the 
Great"  reminds  one  of  Arbuthnot's  letter  to  Swift,  in 
which  the  writer  concludes  his  sketch  of  the  proposed 
map  of  diseases  for  Martinus  Scriblerus  with— "Then 
the  great  diseases  are  like  capital  cities,  with  their 
symptoms  all  like  streets  and  suburbs,  with  the  roads 
that  lead  to  other  diseases.  It  is  thicker  set  with 
towns  than  any  Flanders  map  you  ever  saw.  Rad- 
cliffe  is  painted  at  the  corner  of  the  map,  contending 
for  the  universal  empire  of  this  world,  and  the  rest 
of  the  physicians  opposing  his  ambitious  designs, 
with  a  project  of  a  treaty  of  partition  to  settle 
peace." 

As  a  practitioner,  Radcliffe  served  the  public  as 
well  as  he  did  his  own  interests.  The  violent  meas- 
ures of  bleeding,  and  the  exhibition  of  reducing  medi- 
cines, which  constituted  the  popular  practice  even  to 
the  present  generation,  he  regarded  with  distrust  in 
some  cases  and  horror  in  others.  There  is  a  good  story 


A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  139 

told  of  him,  that  well  illustrates  his  disapproval  of 
a  kill-or-cure  system,  and  his  hatred  of  Nurse  Gib- 
bons. John  Bancroft,  the  eminent  surgeon,  who  re- 
sided in  Russell  Street,  Covent  Garden,  had  a  son  at- 
tacked with  inflammation  of  the  lungs.  Gibbons  was 
caUed  in,  and  prescribed  the  most  violent  remedies, 
or  rather  the  most  virulent  irritants.  The  child  be- 
came rapidly  worse,  and  RadclifEe  was  sent  for.  "I 
can  do  nothing,  sir,"  observed  the  doctor,  after  visit- 
ing his  patient,  "for  the  poor  little  boy's  preservation. 
He  is  killed  to  all  intents  and  purposes.  But  if  you 
have  any  thoughts  of  putting  a  stone  over  him,  I'll 
help  you  to  an  inscription."  The  offer  was  accepted, 
and  over  the  child's  grave,  in  Covent  Garden  church- 
yard, was  placed  a  stone  sculptured  with  a  figure  of 
a  child  laying  one  hand  on  his  side,  and  saying,  "Hie 
dolor,"  and  pointing  with  the  other  to  a  death's  head 
on  which  was  engraved, ' '  Ibi  medicus. ' '  This  is  about 
the  prettiest  professional  libel  which  we  can  point  to 
in  aU  the  quarrels  of  the  Faculty. 

The  uses  to  which  the  doctor  applied  his  wealth 
every  one  knows.  Notwithstanding  his  occasional  acts 
of  munificence,  and  a  loss  of  £5000  in  an  East  Indian 
venture,  into  which  Betterton,  the  tragedian,  seduced 
him,  his  accumulations  were  very  great.  In  his  will, 
after  liberally  providing  for  the  members  of  his  family 
and  his  dependents,  he  devoted  his  acquisitions  to  the 
benefit  of  the  University  of  Oxford.  From  them  have 
proceeded  the  Radcliffe  Library,  the  Radcliffe  Infir- 
mary, the  Radcliffe  Observatory,  and  the  Radcliffe 
Travelling  Fellowships.  It  is  true  that  nothing  haa 
transpired  in  the  history  of  these  last-mentioned  en- 
dowments to  justify  us  in  reversing  the  sentiment  of 


140  A  BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

Johnson,  who  remarked  to  Boswell :  "It  is  wonderful 
how  little  good  Radcliffe's  Travelling  Fellowships 
have  done.  I  know  nothing  that  has  been  imported  by 
them." 

After  lying  in  state  at  his  own  residence,  and  again 
in  the  University,  Radcliffe's  body  was  interred,  with 
great  pomp,  in  St.  Mary's  Church,  Oxford.  The  roy- 
al gift  of  so  large  an  estate  (which  during  life  he 
had  been  unable  thoroughly  to  enjoy)  to  purchase  a 
library,  the  contents  of  which  he  at  no  time  could 
have  read,  of  course  provoked  much  comment.  It 
need  not  be  said  that  the  testator's  memory  was,  for 
the  most  part,  extolled  to  the  skies.  lie  had  died  rich 
—a  great  virtue  in  itself.  He  was  dead ;  and  as  men 
like  to  deal  out  censure  as  long  as  it  can  cause  pain, 
and  scatter  praise  when  it  can  no  longer  create  hap- 
piness, Radcliffe,  the  physician,  the  friend  of  suffer- 
ing humanity,  the  benefactor  of  ancient  and  Tory  Ox- 
ford, was  spoken  of  in  "most  handsome  terms."  One 
could  hardly  believe  that  this  great  good  man,  this 
fervent  Christian  and  sublime  patriot,  was  the  same 
man  as  he  whom  Steele  had  ridiculed  for  servile  van- 
ity, and  to  bring  whom  into  contempt  a  play  was  writ- 
ten, and  publicly  acted,  only  ten  years  before,  to  the 
intense  delight  of  the  Duchess  of  Marlborough,  and 
the  applauding  maids  of  honour. 

The  philosophic  Mandeville,  far  from  approving 
the  behaviour  of  the  fickle  multitude,  retained  his 
old  opinion  of  the  doctor,  and  gave  it  to  the  world 
in  his  "Essay  on  Charity  and  Charity  Schools." 
"That  a  man,"  writes  Mandeville,  "with  small  skill  in 
physic,  and  hardly  any  learning,  should  by  vile  arts 
get  into   practice,  and   lay  up   great  wealth,  is  no 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  141 

mighty  wonder;  but  that  he  should  so  deeply  work 
himself  into  the  good  opinion  of  the  world  as  to  gain 
the  general  esteem  of  a  nation,  and  establish  a  repu- 
tation beyond  all  his  contemporaries,  with  no  other 
qualities  but  a  perfect  knowledge  of  mankind,  and 
a  capacity  of  making  the  most  of  it,  is  something  ex- 
traordinary. 

"  If  a  man  arrived  to  such  a  height  of  glory  should 
be  almost  distracted  with  pride— sometime  give  his 
attendance  on  a  servant,  or  any  mean  person,  for  noth- 
ing and  at  the  same  time  neglect  a  nobleman  that 
gives  exhorbitant  fees— at  other  times  refuse  to  leave 
his  bottle  for  his  business,  without  any  regard  to  the 
quality  of  the  persons  that  sent  for  him,  or  the  dan- 
ger they  are  in ;  if  he  should  be  surly  and  morose,  af- 
fect to  be  an  humourist,  treat  his  patients  like  dogs,* 
though  people  of  distinction,  and  value  no  man  but 
what  would  deify  him,  and  never  call  in  question  tha 
certainty  of  his  oracles;  if  he  should  insult  all  the 
world,  affront  the  first  nobility,  and  extend  his  inso- 
lence even  to  the  royal  family ;  if  to  maintain,  as  well 
as  to  increase,  the  fame  of  his  sufSciency,  he  should 
scorn  to  consult  his  betters,  on  what  emergency  so- 
ever, look  down  with  contempt  on  the  most  deserv- 
ing of  his  profession,  and  never  confer  with  any  other 
physician  but  what  will  pay  homage  to  his  genius, 
creep  to  his  humour,  and  ever  approach  him  with  all 
the  slavish  obsequiousness  a  court  flatterer  can  treat 
a  prince  with;  if  a  man  in  his  life-time  should  dis- 
cover, on  the  one  hand,  such  manifest  symptoms  of  su- 
perlative pride,  and  an  insatiable  greediness  after 
wealth  at  the  "ame  time ;  and,  on  the  other,  no  regard 
to  religion  or  affection  to  his  kindred,  no  compassion 


142  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

to  the  poor,  and  hardly  any  humanity  to  his  fellow- 
creatures;  if  he  gave  no  proofs  that  he  loved  his  coun- 
try, had  a  public  spirit,  or  was  a  lover  of  the  arts,  of 
books,  or  of  literature— what  must  we  judge  of  his 
motive,  the  principle  he  acted  from,  when,  after  his 
death,  we  find  that  he  has  left  a  trifle  among  his  rela- 
tions who  stood  in  need  of  it,  and  an  immense  treas- 
ure to  a  University  that  did  not  want  it. 

"Let  a  man  be  as  charitable  as  it  is  possible  for 
him  to  be,  without  forfeiting  his  reason  or  good  sense, 
can  he  think  otherwise,  but  that  this  famous  phy- 
sician did,  in  the  making  of  his  will,  as  in  everything 
else,  indulge  his  darling  passion,  entertaining  hia 
vanity  with  the  happiness  of  the  contrivance?" 

This  severe  portrait  is  just  about  as  true  as  the  like- 
ness of  a  man,  painted  by  a  conscientious  enemy,  usu- 
ally is.  Eadcliffe  was  not  endowed  with  a  kindly 
nature.  "Mead,  I  love  you,"  said  he  to  his  fascinat- 
ing adulator ;  ' '  and  I  '11  tell  you  a  sure  secret  to  make 
your  fortune— use  all  mankind  ill."  Eadcliffe  car- 
ried out  his  rule  by  wringing  as  much  as  possible 
from,  and  returning  as  little  as  possible  to,  his  fellow- 
men.  He  could  not  pay  a  tradesman's  bill  without  a 
sense  of  keen  suffering.  Even  a  poor  pavior,  who  had 
been  employed  to  do  a  job  to  the  stones  before  the  doc- 
tor's house  in  Bloomsbury  Square  (whither  the  physi- 
cian removed  from  Bow  Street),  could  not  get  his 
money  without  a  contest.  "Why,  you  rascal!"  cried 
the  debtor,  as  he  alighted  from  his  chariot,  "do  you 
pretend  to  be  paid  for  such  a  piece  of  work?  Why, 
you  have  spoiled  my  pavement,  and  then  covered  it 
over  with  earth  to  hide  the  bad  work. ' ' 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  143 

"Doctor,"  responded  the  man,  dryly,  "mine  is  not 
the  only  bad  work  the  earth  hides. ' ' 

Of  course,  the  only  course  to  pursue  with  a  creditor 
who  could  dun  in  this  sarcastic  style  was  to  pay,  and 
be  rid  of  him.  But  the  doctor  made  up  for  his  own 
avarice  by  being  ever  ready  to  condemn  it  in  others. 

Tyson,  the  miser,  being  near  his  last  hour,  magnan- 
imously resolved  to  pay  two  of  his  3,000,000  guineas 
to  Radcliffe,  to  learn  if  anything  could  be  done  for  his 
malady.  The  miserable  old  man  came  up  with  his 
wife  from  Hackney,  and  tottered  into  the  consulting- 
room  in  Bloomsbury  Square,  with  two  guineas  in  his 
hand— 

"You  may  go,  sir,"  exclaimed  Radcliffe,  to  the 
astonished  wretch,  who  trusted  he  was  unknown— 

"you  may  go  home,  and  die,  and  be ,  without  a 

speedy  repentance;  for  both  the  grave  and  the  devil 
are  ready  for  Tyson  of  Haeknej',  who  has  grown  rich 
out  of  the  spoils  of  the  public  and  the  tears  of  orphans 
and  widows.  You'll  be  a  dead  man,  sir,  in  ten  days." 
There  are  numerous  stories  extant  relative  to  Rad' 
cliffe's  practice;  but  nearly  all  those  which  bear  the 
stamp  of  genuineness  are  unfit  for  publication  in  thq 
present  polite  age.  Such  stories  as  the  hasty-pudding 
one,  re-edited  by  the  pleasant  author  of  "The  Gold- 
headed  Cane,"  can  be  found  by  the  dozen,  but  the 
cumbrous  workmanship  of  Mr.  Joseph  Miller  is  mani- 
fest in  them  all. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  DOCTOR  AS  A  BON-VIVANT. 

"\^^lat  must  I  do,  sir?"  inquired  an  indolent  bon- 
vivant  of  Abernethy. 

"Live  on  sixpence  a  day,  and  earn  it,  sir,"  was  the 
stern  answer. 

Gabriel  Fallopius,  who  has  given  his  name  to  a 
structure  with  which  anatomists  are  familiar,  gave  the 
same  reproof  in  a  more  delicate  manner.  With  a 
smile  he  replied  in  the  words  of  Terence, 

"Otio  abundas  Antipho,"— "Sir,  you're  as  lazy  as 
Hall's  dog." 

But,  though  medical  practitioners  have  dealt  in 
sayings  like  these,  to  do  them  bare  justice,  it  must  be 
admitted  that  their  preaching  has  generally  been  con- 
tradicted by  the  practice.  When  medicine  remained 
very  much  in  the  hands  of  the  ladies,  the  composition 
of  remedies,  and  the  making  of  dinners,  went  on  in 
the  same  apartment.  Indeed  hunger  and  thirst  were 
but  two  out  of  a  list  of  diseases  that  were  ministered 
to  by  the  attendants  round  a  kitchen  table.  The  same 
book  held  the  receipts  for  dishes  and  the  recipes  for 
electuaries.     In  many  an  old  hall  of  England  the 


A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  145 

manual  still  remains  from  which  three  centuries  ago 
the  lady  of  the  house  learned  to  dress  a  boar's  head  or 
cure  a  cold.  Most  physicians  would  now  disdain  to 
give  dietetic  instruction  to  a  patient  beyond  the  most 
general  directions ;  but  there  are  cases  where,  even  in 
these  days,  they  stoop  to  do  so,  with  advantage  to 
themselves  and  their  patients. 

"I  have  ordered  twelve  dinners  this  morning,"  e 
cheery  little  doctor  said  to  the  writer  of  these  pages, 
on  the  white  cliffs  of  a  well-known  sea-side  town. 

"Indeed— I  did  not  know  that  was  your  business." 

"But  it  is.  A  host  of  rich  old  invalids  come  down 
here  to  be  medicinally  treated.  They  can't  be  happy 
without  good  living,  and  yet  are  so  ignorant  of  the  sci- 
ence and  art  of  eating,  that  they  don't  know  how  to 
distinguish  between  a  luxurious  and  pernicious  diet, 
and  a  luxurious  and  wholesome  one.  They  flock  to 
the  'Duke's  Hotel,'  and  I  always  tell  the  landlord 
what  they  are  to  have.  Each  dinner  costs  three  or 
four  guineas.  They'd  grudge  them,  and  their  con- 
sciences would  be  uneasy  at  spending  so  much  money, 
if  they  ordered  their  dinners  themselves.  But  when 
they  regard  the  fare  as  medicine  recommended  by  the 
doctor,  there  is  no  drawback  to  their  enjoyment  of  it. 
Their  confidence  in  me  is  unbounded." 

The  bottle  and  the  board  were  once  the  doctor's  two 
favourite  companions.  More  than  one  eminent  physi- 
cian died  in  testifying  his  affection  for  them.  In  the 
days  of  tippling  they  were  the  most  persevering  of 
tavern-haunters.  No  wonder  that  some  of  them  were 
as  fat  as  Daniel  Lambert,  and  that  even  more  died 
sudden  deaths  from  apoplexy.  The  obesity  of  Dr. 
Stafford  was  celebrated  in  an  epitaph:— 

4—10 


146  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

"Take  heed,  O  good  traveller,  and  do  not  tread  hard, 
For  here  lies  Dr.  Stafford  in  all  this  churchyard." 

Dr.  Beddoes  was  so  stout  that  the  Clifton  ladies 
used  to  call  him  their  "walking  feather-bed." 

Dr.  Flemyng  weighed  twenty  stone  and  eleven 
pounds,  till  he  reduced  his  weight  by  abstinence  from 
the  delicacies  of  the  table,  and  by  taking  a  quarter  of 
au  ounce  of  common  Castile  soap  every  night. 

Dr.  Cheyne's  weight  was  thirty-two  stone,  till  he 
cured  himself  by  persevering  in  a  temperate  diet. 
Laughing  at  two  unwieldly  noblemen  whose  corpu- 
lence was  the  favourite  jest  of  all  the  wits  in  the 
court,  Louis  XV.  said  to  one  of  them,  ' '  I  suppose  you 
take  little  or  no  exercise." 

"Your  Majesty  will  pardon  me,"  replied  the  bulky 
duke,  "for  I  generally  walk  two  or  three  times  round 
my  cousin  every  morning." 

Sir  Theodore  Mayerne,  who,  though  he  was  the 
most  eminent  physician  of  his  time,  did  not  disdain  to 
write  "Excellent  and  Well- Approved  Receipts  in 
Cookery,  with  the  best  way  of  Preserving,"  was  killed 
by  tavern  wine.  He  died,  after  returning  from  sup- 
per in  a  Strand  hotel ;  his  immediate  friends  attribu- 
ting his  unexpected  death  to  the  quality  of  the  bever- 
age, but  others,  less  charitable,  setting  it  down  to  the 
quantity. 

Not  many  years  ago,  about  a  score  surgeons  were 
dining  together  at  a  tavern,  when,  about  five  minutes 
after  some  very  "particular  port"hadbeensentround 
for  the  first  time,  they  all  fell  back  in  their  chairs, 
afiflicted  in  various  degrees  with  sickness,  vertigo,  and 
spasm.  A  more  pleasant  sight  for  the  waiters  can 
hardly  be  conceived.     One  after  one  the  gentlemen 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  147 

were  conveyed  to  beds  or  sofas.  Unfortunately  for 
the  startling  eiJect  which  the  story  would  otherwise 
have  produced,  they  none  of  them  expired.  The  next 
day  they  remembered  that,  instead  of  relishing  the 
"particular  port,"  they  had  detected  a  very  unpleas- 
ant smack  in  it.  The  black  bottles  were  demanded 
from  the  trembling  landlord,  when  chemical  analysis 
soon  discovered  that  they  had  been  previously  used 
for  fly-poison,  and  had  not  been  properly  cleansed.  A 
fine  old  crust  of  such  a  kind  is  little  to  be  desired. 

It  would  perhaps  have  been  well  had  old  Butler 
(mentioned  elsewhere  in  these  volumes)  met  with  a 
similar  mishap,  if  it  had  only  made  him  a  less  obsti- 
nate frequenter  of  beer-shops.  He  loved  tobacco, 
deeming  it 

"A  physician 
Good  both  for  sound  and  sickly; 

'Tis  a  hot  perfume 

That  expels  cold  Rheume, 
And  makes  it  flow  down  quickly." 

It  is  on  record  that  he  made  one  of  his  patients 
smoke  twenty-five  pipes  at  a  sitting.  But  fond  though 
he  was  of  tobacco,  he  was  yet  fonder  of  beer.  He  in- 
vented a  drink  called  "Butler's  Ale,"  afterwards 
sold  at  the  Butler's  Head,  in  Mason's  Alley,  Basing- 
hall  Street.  Indeed,  he  was  a  sad  old  scamp.  Nightly 
he  would  go  to  the  tavern,  and  drink  deeply  for 
hours,  till  his  maid-servant,  old  Nell,  came  between 
nine  and  ten  o'clock  and  fetched  him  home,  scolding 
him  all  the  way  for  being  such  a  sot.  But  though 
Butler  liked  ale  and  wine  for  himself,  he  thought 
highly  of  water  for  other  people.  "^Tien  he  occupied 
rooms  iu  the  Savoy,  looking  over  the  Thames,  a  gen- 
tleman afflicted  with  an  ague  came  to  consult  him. 


148  A  BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

Butler  tipped  the  wink  to  his  servants,  who  flung  the 
sick  man,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  slap  out  of  the 
window  into  the  river.  We  are  asked  to  believe  that 
"the  surprise  absolutely  cured"  the  patient  of  his 
malady. 

The  physicians  of  Charles  the  Second's  day  were 
jolly  fellows.  They  made  deep  drinking  and  intrigue 
part  of  their  profession  as  well  as  of  their  practice. 
Their  books  contain  arguments  in  favour  of  indul- 
gence, which  their  passions  suggested  and  the  taste  of 
the  times  approved.  Tobias  Whitaker  and  John 
Archer,  both  physicians  in  ordinary  to  the  merry 
monarch,  were  representative  men  of  their  class. 
Whitaker,  a  Norfolk  man,  practised  with  success  at 
Norwich  before  coming  up  to  London.  He  published 
a  discourse  upon  waters,  that  proved  him  very  ignor- 
ant on  the  subject ;  and  a  treatise  on  the  properties  of 
wine,  that  is  a  much  better  testimony  to  the  soundness 
of  his  iinderstanding.  Prefixed  to  his  "Elenchus  of 
opinions  on  Small-Pox,"  is  a  portrait  that  represents 
him  as  a  well-looking  fellow.  That  he  was  a  sincere 
and  discerning  worshipper  of  Bacchus,  is  shown  by 
his  "Tree  of  Humane  Life,  or  the  Bloud  of  the  Grape. 
Proving  the  possibilitie  of  maintaining  humane  life 
from  infancy  to  extreame  old  age  without  any  sick- 
nesse  by  the  use  of  Wine."  In  this  work  (sold,  by  the 
way,  in  the  author's  shop,  Pope's  Head  Alley)  we 
read  of  wine,— "This  is  the  phisick  that  doth  not  dull, 
but  sets  a  true  edge  upon  nature,  after  operation 
leaveth  no  venomous  contact.  Sure  I  am  this  was 
ancient  phisick,  else  what  meant  Avicenna,  Rhasis, 
and  Averroes,  to  move  the  body  twice  every  month 
with  the  same ;  as  it  is  familiar  to  Nature,  so  they  used 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  149 

it  faniiliarlj\  As  for  my  own  experience,  though  I 
have  not  lived  yet  so  long  as  to  love  exeesse,  yet  have 
I  seene  such  powerful  effects,  both  on  my  selfe  and 
others,  as  if  I  could  render  no  other  reason,  they  were 
enough  to  persuade  me  of  its  excellencie,  seeing  ex- 
tenuate withered  bodies  by  it  caused  to  be  f aire,  fresh, 
plumpe,  and  fat,  old  and  infirme  to  be  young  and 
sound,  when  as  water  or  small-beer  drinkers  looke  like 
apes  rather  than  men. ' ' 

John  Archer,  the  author  of  "Every  Man  his  own 
Doctor,"  and  "Secrets  Disclosed,"  was  an  advocate 
of  generous  diet  and  enlightened  sensuality.  His 
place  of  business  was  "a  chamber  in  a  Sadler's  howse 
over  against  the  Black  Horse  nigh  Charing-cross," 
where  his  hours  of  attendance  for  some  years  were 
from  11  A.  M.  to  5  p.  m.  each  day.  On  setting  up  a 
house  at  Knightsbridge,  where  he  resided  in  great 
style,  he  shortened  the  number  of  hours  daily  passed 
in  London.  In  1684  he  announced  in  one  of  his  works 
— "For  these  and  other  Directions  you  may  send  to 
the  Author,  at  his  chamber  against  the  Mews  by  Char- 
ing-cross, who  is  certainly  there  from  twelve  to  four, 
at  other  times  at  his  house  at  Knightsbridge,  being  a 
mile  from  Charing-cross,  where  is  good  air  for  cure  of 
consumptions,  melancholy,  and  other  infirmities." 
He  had  also  a  business  established  in  Winchester 
Street,  near  Gresham  College,  next  door  to  the  Fleece 
Tavern.  Indeed,  physician-in-ordinary  to  the  King 
though  he  was,  he  did  not  think  it  beneath  him  to 
keep  a  number  of  apothecaries'  shops,  and,  like  Whit- 
aker,  to  live  by  the  sale  of  drugs  as  well  as  fees.  His 
cordial  dyet  drink  was  advertised  as  costing  2s.  6d. 
per  quart ;  for  a  box  containing  30  morbus  pills,  the 


150  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

charge  was  5s. ;  40  corroborating  pills  were  to  be  had 
for  the  same  sum.  Like  Dr.  Everard,  he  recom- 
mended his  patients  to  smoke,  saying  that  "tobacco 
smoke  purified  the  air  from  infectious  malignancy  by 
its  fragrancy,  sweetened  the  breath,  strengthened  the 
brain  and  memory,  and  revived  the  sight  to  admir- 
ation." He  sold  tobacco,  of  a  superior  quality  to  the 
ordinary  article  of  commerce,  at  2s.  and  Is.  an  ounce. 
"The  order  of  taking  it  is  like  other  tobacco  at  any 
time ;  its  virtues  may  be  perceived  by  taking  one  pipe, 
after  which  you  will  spit  more,  and  your  mouth  will 
be  dryer  than  after  common  tobacco,  which  you  may 
moisten  by  drinking  any  warm  drink,  as  coffee,  &c., 
or  with  sugar  candj%  liquorish,  or  a  raisin,  and  you 
will  find  yourself  much  refreshed." 

Whilst  Whitaker  and  Archer  were  advising  men  to 
smoke  and  drink,  another  physician  of  the  Court  was 
inventing  a  stomach-brush,  in  some  respects  much  like 
the  bottle-brush  with  which  fly-poison  ought  to  be 
taken  from  the  interior  of  black  bottles  before  wine  is 
committed  to  them.  This  instrument  was  pushed 
down  the  gullet,  and  then  poked  about  and  turned 
round,  much  in  the  same  way  as  a  chimney-sweeper's 
brush  is  handled  by  a  dexterous  operator  on  soot.  It 
was  recommended  that  gentlemen  should  thus  sweep 
out  their  insides  not  oftener  than  once  a  week,  but  not 
less  frequently  than  once  a  month.  The  curious  may 
find  not  only  a  detailed  description  but  engraved  like- 
ness of  this  remarkable  stomach-brush  in  the  Gentle- 
man's Magazine,  vol.  xx.,  for  the  year  1750. 

It  would  be  unfair  to  take  leave  of  Dr.  Archer  with- 
out mentioning  his  three  inventions,  on  which  he 
justly  prided  himself  not  a  little.    He  constructed  a 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  151 

hot  steam-bath,  an  oven  "which  doth  with  a  small 
faggot  bake  a  good  quantity  of  anything,"  and  "a 
compleat  charriot  that  shall  with  any  ordinary  horse 
run  swift  with  four  or  five  people  within,  and  there 
is  place  for  more  without,  all  which  one  horse  can  as 
easily  draw  as  two  horses. ' '  In  these  days  of  vapour 
baths,  bachelors'  kettles,  and  broughams,  surely  Dr. 
Archer  ought  to  have  a  statue  by  the  side  of  Jenner 
in  Trafalgar  Square. 

The  doctors  of  Anne's  time  were  of  even  looser 
morals  than  their  immediate  predecessors.  In  tav- 
erns, over  wine,  they  received  patients  and  apothecar- 
ies. It  became  fashionable  (a  fashion  that  has  lasted 
down  to  the  present  day)  for  a  physician  to  scratch 
down  his  prescriptions  illegibly;  the  mode,  in  all 
probability,  arising  from  the  fact  that  a  doctor's  hand 
was  usually  too  unsteady  to  write  distinctly. 

Freind  continually  visited  his  patients  in  a  state  of 
intoxication.  To  one  lady  of  high  rank  he  came  in 
such  a  state  of  confusion  that  when  in  her  room  he 
could  only  grumble  to  himself,  "Drunk— drunk- 
drunk,  by  God!"  Fortunately  the  fair  patient  was 
suffering  from  the  same  malady  as  her  doctor,  who  (as 
she  learnt  from  her  maid  on  returning  to  conscious- 
ness) had  made  the  above  bluff  comment  on  her  case, 
and  then  had  gone  away.  The  next  day,  Freind  was 
sitting  in  a  penitent  state  over  his  tea,  debating  what 
apology  he  should  offer  to  his  aristocratic  patient, 
when  he  was  relieved  from  his  perplexity  by  the  ar- 
rival of  a  note  from  the  lady  herself  enclosing  a  hand- 
some fee,  imploring  her  dear  Dr.  Freind  to  keep  her 
secret,  and  begging  him  to  visit  her  during  the  course 
of  the  day. 


152  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

On  another  occasion  Freind  wrote  a  prescription 
for  a  member  of  an  important  family,  when  his  facul- 
ties were  so  evidently  beyond  his  control  that  Mead 
was  sent  for.  On  arriving,  Mead,  with  a  characteris- 
tic delicacy  towards  his  professional  friend,  took  up 
the  tipsy  man's  prescription,  and  having  looked  at  it, 
said,  "  Ton  my  honour,  Dr.  Freind  can  write  a  bet- 
ter prescription  when  drunk  than  I  can  when  sober." 

Gibbons— the  "Nurse  Gibbons"  of  our  old  friend 
Radcliffe— was  a  deep  drinker,  disgusting,  by  the 
grossness  of  his  debaucheries,  the  polite  and  epicur- 
ean Garth.  But  Gibbons  did  something  for  English 
dinner-tables  worth  remembering.  He  brought  into 
domestic  use  the  mahogany  with  which  we  have  so 
many  pleasant  associations.  His  brother,  a  West  In- 
dian Captain,  brought  over  some  of  the  wood  as  bal- 
last, thinking  it  might  possibly  turn  to  use.  At  first 
the  carpenters,  in  a  truly  conservative  spirit,  refused 
to  have  anything  to  do  with  the  "new  wood,"  saying 
it  was  too  hard  for  their  tools.  Dr.  Gibbons,  however, 
had  first  a  candle-box  and  then  a  bureau  made  for 
Mrs.  Gibbons  out  of  the  condemned  material.  The 
bureau  so  pleased  his  friends,  amongst  whom  was  the 
Duchess  of  Buckingham,  that  her  Grace  ordered  a 
similar  piece  of  furniture,  and  introduced  the  wood 
into  high  life,  where  it  quickly  became  the  fashion. 

Of  Radcliffe's  drunkenness  mention  is  made  else- 
where. As  an  eater,  he  was  a  gourmand,  not  a  gour- 
met. When  Prince  Eugene  of  Savoy  came  over  to 
England  on  a  diplomatic  mission,  his  nephew,  the 
Chevalier  de  Soissons,  fell  into  the  fashion  of  the 
town,  roaming  it  at  night  in  search  of  frays— a  roar- 
ing,  swaggering  mohock.     The   sprightly   Chevalier 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  153 

took  it  into  his  head  that  it  would  be  a  pleasant  thing 
to  thrash  a  watchman;  so  he  squared  up  to  one,  and 
threatened  to  kill  him.  Instead  of  succumbing,  the 
watchman  returned  his  assailant's  blows,  and  gave 
him  an  awful  thrashing.  The  next  day,  what  with  the 
mauling  he  had  undergone,  and  what  with  delirium 
tremens,  the  merry  roisterer  was  declared  by  his  phy- 
sician, Sieur  Swartenburgh,  to  be  in  a  dying  state. 
Radcliffe  was  called  in,  and  acting  on  his  almost  in- 
variable rule,  told  Prince  Eugene  that  the  young  man 
must  die,  because  Swartenburgh  had  maltreated  him. 
The  prophecy  was  true,  if  the  criticism  was  not.  The 
Chevalier  died,  and  was  buried  amongst  the  Ormond 
family  in  Westminster  Abbey— it  being  given  out  to 
the  public  that  he  had  died  of  small-pox. 

Prince  Eugene  conceived  a  strong  liking  for  Rad- 
cliffe, and  dined  with  him  at  the  Doctor's  residence. 
The  dinner  Radcliffe  put  before  his  guest  is  expres- 
sive of  the  coarseness  both  of  the  times  and  the  man. 
On  the  table  the  only  viands  were  barons  of  beef,  jig- 
gets  of  mutton,  legs  of  pork,  and  such  other  ponder- 
ous masses  of  butcher's  stuff,  which  no  one  can  look 
at  without  discomfort,  when  the  first  edge  has  been 
taken  off  the  appetite.  Prince  Eugene  expressed  him- 
self delighted  with  "the  food  and  liquors!" 

George  Fordyce,  like  Radcliffe,  was  fond  of  sub- 
stantial fare.  For  more  than  twenty  years  he  dined 
daily  at  Dolly's  Chop-house.  The  dinner  he  there 
consumed  was  his  only  meal  during  the  four-and- 
twenty  hours,  but  its  bulk  would  have  kept  a  boa-con- 
strictor happy  for  a  twelvemonth.  Four  o'clock  was 
the  hour  at  which  the  repast  commenced,  when,  punc- 
tual to  a  minute,  the  Doctor  seated  himself  at  a  table 


154  A  BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

specially  reserved  for  him,  and  adorned  with  a  silver 
tankard  of  strong  ale,  a  bottle  of  port-wine,  and  a 
measure  containing  a  quarter  of  a  pint  of  brandy. 
Before  the  dinner  was  first  put  on,  he  had  one  light 
dish  of  a  broiled  fowl,  or  a  few  whitings.  Having 
leisurely  devoured  this  plate,  the  doctor  took  one  glass 
of  brandy,  and  asked  for  his  steak.  The  steak  was 
always  a  prime  one,  weighing  one  pound  and  a  half. 
When  the  man  of  science  had  eaten  the  whole  of  it,  he 
took  the  rest  of  his  brandy,  then  drank  his  tankard  of 
heady  ale,  and,  lastly,  sipped  down  his  bottle  of  port. 
Having  brought  his  intellects,  up  or  down,  to  the 
standard  of  his  pupils,  he  rose  and  walked  down  to 
his  house  in  Essex  Street  to  give  his  six  o'clock  lecture 
on  Chemistry. 

Dr.  Beauford  was  another  of  the  eighteenth-century 
physicians  who  thought  temperance  a  vice  that  hadn't 
even  the  recommendation  of  transient  pleasure.  A 
Jacobite  of  the  most  enthusiastic  sort,  he  was  not  less 
than  Freind  a  favourite  with  the  aristocracy  who 
countenanced  the  Stuart  faction.  As  he  was  known  to 
be  very  intimate  with  Lord  Barrymore,  the  Doctor 
was  summoned,  in  1745,  to  appear  before  the  Privy- 
Council,  and  answer  the  questions  of  the  custodians  of 
his  Majesty's  safety  and  honour. 

"You  know  Lord  Barrymore?"  said  one  of  the 
Lords  of  Council. 

"Intimately — most  intimately," — was  the  answer. 

"You  are  continually  with  him?" 

' '  We  dine  together  almost  daily  when  his  Lordship 
is  in  town." 

"What  do  you  talk  about?" 

"Eating  and  drinking." 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  155 

"And  what  else?" 

' '  Oh,  my  lord,  we  never  talk  of  anything  except  eat- 
ing and  drinking — drinking  and  eating." 

A  good  deal  of  treasonable  sentiment  might  have 
been  exchanged  in  these  discussions  of  eating  and 
drinking.  "God  send  this  crum-well  down!"  was  the 
ordinary  toast  of  the  Cavalier  during  the  glorious 
Protectorate  of  Oliver.  And  long  afterwards,  English 
gentlemen  of  Jacobite  sympathies,  drinking  "to  the 
King,"  before  they  raised  the  glass  to  their  lips,  put  it 
over  the  water-bottle,  to  indicate  where  the  King  was 
whose  prosperity  they  pledged. 

At  the  tavern  in  Finch  Lane,  where  Beauford  re- 
ceived the  apothecaries  who  followed  him,  he  drank 
freely,  But  never  was  known  to  give  a  glass  from  his 
bottle  to  one  of  his  clients.  In  this  respect  he  resem- 
bled Dr.  Gaskin  of  Plymouth,  a  physician  in  fine  prac- 
tice in  Devonshire  at  the  close  of  the  last  century,  who 
once  said  to  a  young  beginner  in  his  profession, 
"Young  man,  when  you  get  a  fee,  don't  give  fifteen 
shillings  of  it  back  to  your  patient  in  beef  and  port- 
wine." 

Contemporary  with  Beauford  was  Dr.  Barrowby— 
wit,  scholar,  political  partisan,  and  toper.  Barrowby 
was  the  hero  of  an  oft-told  tale,  recently  attributed  in 
the  newspapers  to  Abernethy.  When  canvassing  for 
a  place  on  the  staff  of  St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital, 
Barrowby  entered  the  shop  of  one  of  the  governors,  a 
grocer  on  Snow-hill,  to  solicit  his  influence  and  vote. 
The  tradesman,  bursting  with  importance,  and  antici- 
pating the  pleasure  of  getting  a  very  low  bow  from  a 
gentleman,  strutted  up  the  shop,  and,  with  a  mixture 


156  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

of  insolent  patronage  and  insulting  familiarity,  cried, 
"Well,  friend,  and  what  is  your  business?" 

Barrowby  paused  for  a  minute,  cut  him  right 
through  with  the  glance  of  his  eye,  and  then  said, 
quietly  and  slowly,  "I  want  a  pound  of  plums." 

Confused  and  blushing,  the  grocer  did  up  the 
plums.  Barrowby  put  them  in  his  pocket,  and  went 
away  without  asking  the  fellow  for  his  vote. 

A  good  political  story  is  told  of  Barrowby,  the  in- 
cident of  which  occurred  in  1749,  eleven  years  after 
his  translation  of  Astruc's  "Treatise"  appeared. 
Lord  Trentham  (afterwards  Lord  Gower)  and  Sir 
George  Vandeput  were  contesting  the  election  for 
Westminster.  Barrowby,  a  vehement  supporter  of 
the  latter,  was  then  in  attendance  on  the  notorious  Joe 
Weatherby,  master  of  the  "Ben  Jonson's  Head,"  in 
Russell  Street,  who  lay  in  a  perilous  state,  emaciated 
by  nervous  fever.  Mrs.  Weatherby  was  deeply  afflic- 
ted at  her  husband's  condition,  because  it  rendered 
him  unable  to  vote  for  Lord  Trentham.  Towards  the 
close  of  the  polling  days  the  Doctor,  calling  one  day 
on  his  patient,  to  his  great  astonishment  found  him 
up,  and  almost  dressed  by  the  nurse  and  her  assist- 
ants. 

"Hey-day!  what's  the  cause  of  this?"  exclaims 
Barrowby.    "Why  are  you  up  without  my  leave?" 

"Dear  Doctor,"  says  Joe,  in  a  broken  voice,  "I  am 
going  to  poll." 

"To  poll!"  roars  Barrowby,  supposing  the  man  to 
hold  his  wife's  political  opinions,  "you  mean  going  to 
the  devil !  Get  to  bed,  man,  the  cold  air  will  kill  you. 
If  you  don't  get  into  bed  instantly  you'll  be  dead 
before  the  day  is  out." 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  157 

"I'll  do  as  you  bid  me,  doctor,"  was  the  reluctant 
answer.  ' '  But  as  my  wife  was  away  for  the  morning, 
I  thought  I  could  get  as  far  as  Covent  Garden 
Church,  and  vote  for  Sir  George  Vandeput." 

"How,  Joe,  for  Sir  George?" 

"Oh,  yes,  sir,  I  don't  go  with  my  wife.  I  am  a  Sir 
George's  man." 

Barrowby  was  struck  by  a  sudden  change  for  the 
better  in  the  man's  appearance,  and  said,  ""Wait  a 
minute,  nurse.  Don't  pull  off  his  stockings.  Let  me 
feel  his  pulse.  Humph— a  good  firm  stroke!  You 
took  the  pills  I  ordered  you?" 

"Yes,  sir,  but  they  made  me  feel  very  ill." 

"Ay,  so  much  the  better;  that's  what  I  wished. 
Nurse,  how  did  he  sleep  ? ' ' 

"Charmingly,  sir." 

"Well,  Joe,"  said  Barrowby,  after  a  few  seconds' 
consideration,  "if  you  are  bent  on  going  to  this  elec- 
tion, your  mind  ought  to  be  set  at  rest.  It's  a  fine 
sunny  day,  and  a  ride  will  very  likely  do  you  good. 
So,  bedad,  I'll  take  you  with  me  in  my  chariot." 

Delighted  with  his  doctor's  urbanity,  Weatherby 
was  taken  off  in  the  carriage  to  Covent  Garden,  re- 
corded his  vote  for  Sir  George  Vandeput,  was  brought 
back  in  the  same  vehicle,  and  died  two  hours  after- 
wards, amidst  the  reproaches  of  his  wife  and  her 
friends  of  the  Court  party. 

Charles  the  Second  was  so  impressed  with  the  power 
of  the  Medical  Faculty  in  influencing  the  various  in- 
trigues of  political  parties,  that  he  averred  that  Dr. 
Lower,  Nell  Gwynn's  physician,  did  more  mischief 
than  a  troop  of  horse.  But  Barrowby  was  prevented, 
by  the  intrusion  of  death,  from  rendering  effectual 


158  A  BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

service  to  his  party.  Called  away  from  a  dinner-table, 
where  he  was  drinking  deeply  and  laughing  much,  to 
see  a  patient,  he  got  into  his  carriage,  and  was  driven 
off.  When  the  footman  opened  the  door,  on  arriving 
at  the  house  of  sickness,  he  found  his  master  dead.  A 
fit  of  apoplexy  had  struck  him  down,  whilst  he  was 
still  a  young  man,  and  just  as  he  was  ascending  to  the 
highest  rank  of  his  profession. 

John  Sheldon  was  somewhat  addicted  to  the  pleas- 
ures of  the  table.  On  one  occasion,  however,  he  had 
to  make  a  journey  fasting.  The  son  of  a  John  Shel- 
don, an  apothecary  who  carried  on  business  in  the 
Tottenham  Court  Road,  a  few  doors  from  the  Black 
Horse  Yard,  Sheldon  conceived  in  early  life  a  strong 
love  for  mechanics.  At  Harrow  he  was  birched  for 
making  a  boat  and  floating  it.  In  after  life  he  had  a 
notable  scheme  for  taking  whales  with  poisoned  har- 
poons ;  and,  to  test  its  merit,  actually  made  a  voyage 
to  Greenland.  He  was  moreover  the  first  Englishman 
to  make  an  ascent  in  a  balloon.  He  went  with 
Blanchard,  and  had  taken  his  place  in  the  car,  when 
the  aeronaut,  seeing  that  his  machine  was  too  heavily 
weighted,  begged  him  to  get  out. 

' '  If  you  are  my  friend,  you  will  alight.  My  fame, 
my  all,  depends  on  success,"  exclaimed  Blanchard. 

"I  won't,"  bluntly  answered  Sheldon,  as  the  bal- 
loon manifested  symptoms  of  rising. 

In  a  furious  passion,  the  little  air-traveller  ex- 
claimed, ' '  Then  I  starve  you !  Point  du  chicken,  by 
Gar,  you  shall  have  no  chicken."  So  saying,  he  flung 
the  hamper  of  provisions  out  of  the  car,  and,  thus 
lightened,  the  balloon  went  up. 

Abernethy  is  said  to  have  reproved   an  over-fed 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  159 

alderman  for  his  excesses  at  table  in  the  following 
manner.  The  civic  footman  was  ordered  to  put  a 
large  bowl  under  the  sideboard,  and  of  whatever  he 
served  his  master  with  to  throw  the  same  quantity  into 
the  bowl  as  he  put  on  the  gourmand's  plate.  After 
the  repast  was  at  an  end,  the  sated  feaster  was  re- 
quested to  look  into  the  bowl  at  a  nauseous  mess  of 
mock  turtle,  turbot,  roast-beef,  turkey,  sausages, 
cakes,  wines,  ale,  fruits,  cheese. 

Sir  Richard  Jebb  showed  little  favour  to  the  diges- 
tion thinking  it  was  made  to  be  used— not  nursed. 
Habitually  more  rough  and  harsh  than  Abernethy  in 
his  most  surly  moods,  Jebb  offended  many  of  his 
patients.  "That's  my  way,"  said  he  to  a  noble  in- 
valid, astonished  at  his  rudeness.  ' '  Then, ' '  answered 
the  sick  man,  pointing  to  the  door,  "I  beg  you'll  make 
that  your  way." 

To  all  questions  about  diet  Jebb  would  respond 
tetchily  or  carelessly. 

' '  Pray,  Sir  Richard,  may  I  eat  a  muffin  ? ' '  asked  a 
lady. 

"Yes,  madam,  'tis  the  best  thing  you  can  take." 

"Oh,  dear!  Sir  Richard,  I  am  glad  of  that.  The 
other  day  you  said  it  was  the  worst  thing  in  the  world 
for  me. ' ' 

"Good,  madam,  1  said  so  last  Tuesday.  This  isn't  a 
Tuesday— is  it?" 

To  another  lady  who  asked  what  she  might  eat  he 
said  contemptuously,  "Boiled  turnips." 

"Boiled  turnips!"  was  the  answer;  "you  forget, 
Sir  Richard— I  told  you  I  could  not  bear  boiled  tur- 
nips. ' ' 

"Then,  madam,"  answered  Sir  Richard,  sternly,  as 


160  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

if  his  sense  of  the  moral  fitness  of  things  was 
offended,  "you  must  have  a  d d  vitiated  appe- 
tite." 

Sir  Richard's  best  set  of  dietetic  directions  con- 
sisted of  the  following  negative  advice,  given  to  an 
old  gentleman  who  put  the  everlasting  question, 
"\Miat  may  I  eat?"  "My  directions,  sir,  are  simple. 
You  must  not  eat  the  poker,  shovel,  or  tongs,  for  they 
are  hard  of  digestion ;  nor  the  bellows ;  but  anything 
else  you  please." 

Even  to  the  King,  Sir  Richard  was  plain-spoken. 
George  the  Third  lamented  to  him  the  restless  spirit 
of  his  cousin.  Dr.  John  Jebb,  the  dissenting  minister. 
"And  please  your  Majesty,"  was  the  answer,  "if  my 
cousin  were  in  heaven  he  would  be  a  reformer." 

Dr.  Babington  used  to  tell  a  story  of  an  Irish  gentle- 
man, for  whom  he  prescribed  an  emetic,  saying,  "My 
dear  doctor,  it  is  of  no  use  your  giving  me  an  emetic. 
I  tried  it  twice  in  Dublin,  and  it  would  not  stay  on 
my  stomach  either  time. ' '  Jebb 's  stomach  would  have 
gone  on  tranquilly,  even  when  entertaining  an  emetic. 

Jebb,  with  all  his  bluntness,  was  a  mean  lover  of  the 
atmosphere  of  the  Court.  His  income  was  subject  to 
great  fluctuations,  as  the  whims  of  his  fashionable  em- 
ployers ran  for  or  against  him.  Sir  Edward  "Wil- 
mont's  receipts  sank  from  £3000  to  £300,  in  conse- 
quence of  his  having  lost  two  ladies  of  quality  at  the 
Court.  Jebb's  revenue  never  varied  so  much  as  this, 
but  the  £15,000  (the  greatest  sum  he  ever  made  in  one 
year)  often  fell  off  by  thousands.  This  fact  didn't 
tend  to  lessen  his  mortification  at  the  loss  of  a  great 
patient.  "When  George  the  Third  dismissed  him,  and 
took  Sir  George  Baker  in  his  place,  he  nearly  died  of 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  161 

chagrin.  And  when  he  was  recalled  to  attend  the 
royal  family  in  the  measles,  he  nearly  died  of  delight. 
This  ruling  passion  exhibited  itself  strongly  in  death. 
When  he  was  on  his  death-bed,  the  Queen,  by  the  hand 
of  a  German  lady,  wrote  to  inquire  after  his  condi- 
tion. So  elated  was  the  poor  man  with  this  act  of 
royal  benignity,  that  he  grasped  the  letter,  and  never 
let  go  his  hold  of  it  till  the  breath  of  life  quitted  his 
attenuated  body. 

This  chapter  has  been  for  the  most  part  on  the 
feasting  of  physicians.  We'll  conclude  it  with  a  few 
words  on  their  fasts.  In  the  house  of  a  Strand  grocer 
there  used  to  be  a  scientific  club,  of  which  the  princi- 
pal members  were— W.  Heberden,  M.D.,  J.  Turton, 
M.D.,  G.  Baker,  M.D.,  Sir  John  Pringle,  Sir  William 
Watson,  and  Lord  C.  Cavendish  who  officiated  as 
president.  Each  member  paid  sixpence  per  evening 
for  the  use  of  the  grocer's  dining-room.  The  club 
took  in  one  newspaper,  and  the  only  refreshment  al- 
lowed to  be  taken  at  the  place  of  meeting  was— water. 

The  most  abstemious  of  eminent  physicians  was  Sii 
Hans  Sloane,  the  president  of  the  Royal  Society  and 
of  the  College  of  Physicians,  and  (in  a  certain  sense) 
the  founder  of  the  British  Museum.  A  love  of  money 
made  him  a  hater  of  all  good  things,  except  money 
and  his  museum.  He  gave  up  his  winter  soirees  in 
Bloomsbury  Square,  in  order  to  save  his  tea  and  bread 
and  butter.  At  one  of  these  scientific  entertainments 
Handel  offended  the  scientific  knight  deeply  by  lay- 
ing a  muffin  on  one  of  his  books.  "To  be  sure  it  was 
a  gareless  trick,"  said  the  composer,  when  telling  the 
story,  "bud  it  tid  no  monsdrous  mischief;  pode  it  but 
the  old  poog-vorm  treadfully  oud  of  sorts.     I  offered 


162  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

my  best  apologies,  but  the  old  miser  would  not  have 
done  with  it.  If  it  had  been  a  biscuit,  it  would  not 
liave  mattered ;  but  muffin  and  pudder.  And  I  said, 
Ah,  mine  Gotd,  that  is  the  rub!— it  is  the  pudder! 
Now,  mine  worthy  friend,  Sir  Hans  Sloane,  you  have 
a  nodable  excuse,  you  may  save  your  doast  and  pud- 
der, and  lay  it  to  that  unfeeling  gormandizing  Ger- 
man ;  and  den  I  knows  it  will  add  something  to  your 
life  by  sparing  your  hurse." 

The  eccentric  Dr.  GIjti  of  Cambridge,  rarely  dined, 
but  used  to  satisfy  his  hunger  at  chance  times  by  cut- 
ting slices  off  a  cold  joint  (a  constant  ornament  of  the 
side-table  in  his  study),  and  eating  them  while  stand- 
ing. To  eat  such  a  dinner  in  such  an  attitude  would 
be  to  fare  little  better  than  the  ascetic  physician  who 
used  twice  a  week  to  dine  off  two  Abernethy  biscuits, 
consumed  as  he  walked  at  the  pace  of  four  miles  an 
hour.  However  wholesome  they  may  be,  the  hard 
biscuits,  known  as  Abernethies  (but  in  the  construc- 
tion of  which,  by-the-by,  Abernethy  was  no  more  con- 
cerned than  were  "Wellington  and  Blucher  in  making 
the  boots  that  bear  their  names),  are  not  convivial 
cates,  though  one  would  rather  have  to  consume  them 
than  the  calomel  sandwiches  which  Dr.  Curry  (popu- 
larly called  Dr.  Calomel  Curry)  used  to  give  his 
patients. 


CHAPTER  IX. 


FEES. 


From  the  earliest  times  the  Leech  (Leighis),  or 
healer,  has  found,  in  the  exercise  of  his  art,  not  only  a 
pleasant  sense  of  being  a  public  benefactor,  but  also 
the  means  of  private  advancement.  The  use  the 
churchmen  made  of  their  medical  position  throughout 
Christendom  (both  before  and  after  that  decree  of  the 
council  of  Tours,  a.d.  1163,  which  forbade  priests  and 
deacons  to  perform  surgical  operations  in  which  cau- 
teries and  incisions  were  employed),  is  attested  by  the 
broad  acres  they  extracted,  for  their  religious  corpor- 
ations, as  much  from  the  gratitude  as  from  the  super- 
stition of  their  patients.  And  since  the  Reformation, 
from  which  period  the  vocations  of  the  spiritual  and 
the  bodily  physician  have  been  almost  entirely  kept 
apart,  the  practitioners  of  medicine  have  had  cause  to 
bless  the  powers  of  sickness.  A  good  story  is  told  of 
Arbuthnot.  When  he  was  a  young  man  (ere  he  had 
won  the  patronage  of  Queen  Anne,  and  the  friendship 
of  Swift  and  Pope),  he  settled  at  Dorchester,  and  en- 
deavoured to  get  practice  in  that  salubrious  town. 
Nature  obviated  his  good  intentions:  he  wished  to 


164  A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

minister  to  the  afilicted,  if  they  were  rich  enough  to 
pay  for  his  ministrations,  but  the  place  was  so  healthy 
that  it  contained  scarce  half-a-dozen  sick  inhabitants. 
Arbuthnot  determined  to  quit  a  field  so  ill-adapted  for 
a  display  of  his  philanthropy.  ""Where  are  you  off 
to?"  cried  a  friend,  who  met  him  riding  post  towards 
London.  "To  leave  your  confounded  place,"  was  the 
answer,  "for  a  man  can  neither  live  nor  die  there." 
But  to  arrive  at  wealth  was  not  amongst  Arbuthnot 's 
faculties;  he  was  unable  to  use  his  profession  as  a 
trade;  and  only  a  few  weeks  before  his  death  he 
wrote,  "I  am  as  well  as  a  man  can  be  who  is  gasping 
for  breath,  and  has  a  house  full  of  men  and  women 
unprovided  for." 

Arbuthnot 's  ill-luck,  however,  was  quite  out  of  the 
ordinary  rule.  Fuller  says  (1662),  "Physic  hath 
promoted  many  more,  and  that  since  the  reign  of 
King  Henry  VIII.  Indeed,  before  his  time,  I  find  a 
doctor  of  physic,  father  to  Reginald,  first  and  last 
Lord  Bray.  But  this  faculty  hath  flourished  much 
the  three  last  fifty  years;  it  being  true  of  physic, 
what  is  said  of  Sylla,  'suos  divitiis  explevit.'  Sir 
William  Butts,  physician  to  King  Henry  VIII.,  Doc- 
tor Thomas  Wendy,  and  Doctor  Hatcher,  Queen  Eliz- 
abeth's physician,  raised  worshipful  families  in  Nor- 
folk, Cambridge,  and  Lincolnshire,  having  borne  the 
office  of  Sheriflf  in  this  county."  Sir  William  Butts 
was  rewarded  for  his  professional  services  by  Henry 
VIII.  with  the  honour  of  Knighthood,  and  he  at- 
tended that  sovereign  when  the  royal  confirmation 
was  given,  in  1512,  to  the  charter  of  the  barber-sur- 
geons of  London.  Another  eminent  phj-sician  of  the 
same  period,  who  also  arrived    at    the    dignity    of 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  165 

knighthood,  was  John  Ayliffe,  a  sheriff  of  London, 
and  merchant  of  Blackwell-Hall.  His  epitaph 
records:— 

"In  surgery  brought  up  in  youth, 
A  knight  here  lieth  dead; 
A  knight  and  eke  a  surgeon,  such 
As  England  seld'  hath  bred. 

"For  which  so  sovereign  gift  of  God, 

Wherein  he  did  excell, 
King  Henry  VIII.  called  him  to  court. 

Who  loved  him  dearly  well. 

"King  Edward,   for  his  service  sake^ 
Bade  him  rise  up  a  knight ; 
A  name  of  praise,  and  ever  since 
He  Sir  John  Ayliffe  hight." 

This  mode  of  rewarding  medical  services  was  not 
unfrequent  in  those  days,  and  long  before.  Ignor- 
ance as  to  the  true  position  of  the  barber  in  the  mid- 
dle ages  has  induced  the  popular  and  erroneous  belief 
that  the  barber-surgeon  had  in  olden  times  a  con- 
temptible social  status.  Unquestionably  his  art  has 
Leen  elevated  during  late  generations  to  a  dignity  it 
did  not  possess  in  feudal  life;  but  it  might  be  argued 
with  much  force,  that  the  reverse  has  been  the  case 
with  regard  to  his  rank.  Surgery  and  medicine  were 
arts  that  nobles  were  proud  to  practise  for  honour, 
and  not  unfrequently  for  emolument.  The  reigns  of 
Elizabeth  and  her  three  predecessors  in  sovereign 
power  abounded  in  medical  and  surgical  amateurs. 
Amongst  the  fashionable  empirics  BuUeyn  mentions 
Sir  Thomas  Elliot,  Sir  Philip  Paris,  Sir  William  Gas- 
goyne.  Lady  Taylor  and  Lady  Barrel,  and  especially 
that  "goodly  hurtlesse  Gentleman,  Sir  Andrew  Hav- 
eningham,  who  learned  water  to  kill  a  canker  of  his 
own  mother."     Even  an  Earl  of  Derby,  about  this 


166  A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

time,  was  celebrated  for  his  skill  in  chirurgcric  and 
bone-setting,  as  also  was  the  Earl  of  Ilerfurth.  The 
Scots  nobility  were  enthusiastic  dabblers  in  such  mat- 
ters; and  we  have  the  evidence  of  Buchanan  and 
Lindsay  as  to  James  IV.  of  Scotland,  "quod  vulnera 
scientissime  tractaret,"  to  use  the  former  authority's 
words,  and  in  the  language  of  the  latter,  that  he  was 
■'such  a  cunning  chirurgcon,  that  none  in  his  realm 
who  used  that  craft  but  would  take  his  counsel  in  all 
their  proceedings."  The  only  art  which  fashionable 
people  novi^-a-days  care  much  to  meddle  with  is  liter- 
ature. In  estimating  the  difference  between  the  po- 
sition of  an  eminent  surgeon  now,  and  that  which  he 
would  have  occupied  in  earlier  times,  we  must  remem- 
ber that  life  and  hereditary  knighthood  are  the  high- 
est dignities  to  which  he  is  now  permitted  to  aspire ; 
although  since  this  honour  was  first  accorded  to  him 
it  has  so  fallen  in  public  estimation,  that  it  has  almost 
ceased  to  be  an  honour  at  all.  It  can  scarcely  be  ques- 
tioned that  if  Sir  Benjamin  Brodie  were  to  be  ele- 
vated to  the  rank  of  a  Baron  of  the  realm,  he  would 
still  not  occupy  a  better  position,  in  regard  to  the 
rest  of  society,  than  that  which  Sir  William  Butts 
and  Sir  John  Ayliffe  did  after  they  were  knighted. 
A  fact  that  definitely  fixes  the  high  esteem  in  which 
Edward  III.  held  his  medical  officers,  is  one  of  his 
grants— "Quod  Willielmus  Holme  Sirurgicus  Regis 
pro  vita  sua  possit,  fugare,  capere,  et  asportare  omni- 
modas  feras  in  quibuseunque  forestis,  chaccis  parcis 
et  warrennis  regis."  Indeed,  at  a  time  when  the 
highest  dignitaries  of  the  Church,  the  proudest  bish- 
ops and  the  wealthiest  abbots,  practised  as  physicians, 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  167 

it  followed,  as  a  matter  of  course,   that  everything 
pertaining  to  their  profession  was  respected. 

From  remote  antiquity  the  fee  of  the  healer  has 
been  regarded  as  a  voluntary  offering  for  services 
gratuitously  rendered.  The  pretender  to  the  art  al- 
ways stuck  out  for  a  price,  and  in  some  form  or  other 
made  the  demand  which  was  imprinted  on  the  pill- 
boxes of  Lilly's  successor,  John  Case, 

"Here's  fourteen  pills  for  thirteen  pence, 
Enough  in  any  man's  own  con-sci-ence." 

But  the  true  physician  always  left  his  reward  to 
be  measured  by  the  gratitude  and  justice  of  the  ben- 
efited. He  extorted  nothing,  but  freely  received  that 
which  was  freely  given.  Dr.  Doran,  with  his  charac- 
teristic erudition,  says,  "Now  there  is  a  religious  rea- 
son why  fees  are  supposed  not  to  be  taken  by  physi- 
cians. Amongst  the  Christian  martyrs  are  reckoned 
the  two  eastern  brothers,  Damian  and  Cosmas.  They 
practised  as  physicians  in  Cilicia,  and  they  were  the 
first  mortal  practitioners  who  refused  to  take  recom- 
pense for  their  work.  Hence  they  were  called 
Anargyri,  or  'without  money.'  All  physicians  are 
pleasantly  supposed  to  follow  this  example.  They 
never  take  fees,  like  Damian  and  Cosmas;  but  they 
meekly  receive  what  they  know  will  be  given  out  of 
Christian  humility,  and  with  a  certain  or  uncertain 
reluctance,  which  is  the  nearest  approach  that  can 
be  made  in  these  times  to  the  two  brothers  who  were 
in  partnership  at  Egea  in  Cilieia." 

But,  with  all  due  respect  to  our  learned  writer, 
there  is  a  much  better  reason  for  the  phenomenon. 
Self-interest,  and  not  a  Christian  ambition  to  resem- 
ble the  charitable  Cilician  brothers,  was  the  cause  of 


168  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

physicians  preferring  a  system  of  gratuities  to  a  sys- 
tem of  L'gal  rights.  They  could  scarcely  have  put 
in  a  claim  without  defining  the  amount  claimed;  and 
they  soon  discovered  that  a  rich  patient,  left  to  his 
generosity,  folly,  and  impotent  anxiety  to  propitiate 
the  mysterious  functionary  who  presided  over  his 
life,  would,  in  a  great  majority  of  cases,  give  ten,  or 
even  a  hundred  times  as  much  as  they  in  the  wildest 
audacity  of  avarice  would  ever  dare  to  ask  for. 

Seleucus,  for  having  his  son  Antiochus  restored  to 
health,  was  fool  enough  to  give  sixty  thousand  crowns 
to  Erasistratus :  and  for  their  attendance  on  the  Em- 
peror Augustus,  and  his  two  next  successors,  no  less 
than  four  physicians  received  annual  pensions  of  two 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  sesterces  apiece.  Indeed, 
there  is  no  saying  what  a  sick  man  will  not  give  his 
doctor.  The  "cacoethes  donandi"  is  a  manifestation 
of  enfeebled  powers  which  a  high-minded  physician 
is  often  called  upon  to  resist,  and  an  unprincipled  one 
often  basely  turns  to  his  advantage.  Alluding  to  this 
feature  of  the  sick,  a  deservedly  successful  and  hon- 
ourable practitioner,  using  the  language  of  one  of 
our  Oriental  pro-consuls,  said  with  a  laugh  to  the 
writer  of  these  pages,  "I  wonder  at  my  moderation." 

But  directly  health  approaches,  this  desirable 
frame  of  mind  disappears.  "When  the  devil  was  sick 
he  was  a  very  different  character  from  what  he  was 
on  getting  well.  'Tis  so  with  ordinary  patients,  not 
less  than  Satanic  ones.  The  man  who,  when  he  is  in 
his  agonies,  gives  his  medical  attendant  double  fees 
three  times  a  day  (and  vows,  please  God  he  recover, 
to  make  his  fortune  by  trumpeting  his  praises  to  the 
world),   on   becoming  convalescent,    grows  irritable, 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  169 

suspicious,  and  distant,— and  by  the  time  he  can  re- 
sume his  customary  occupations,  looks  on  his  dear 
benefactor  and  saviour  as  a  designing  rascal,  bent  on 
plundering  him  of  his  worldly  possessions.  Euricus 
Cordus,  who  died  in  1535,  seems  to  have  taken  the 
worst  possible  time  for  getting  his  payment;  but  it 
cannot  be  regretted  that  he  did  so,  as  his  experiences 
inspired  him  to  write  the  following  excellent  epi- 
gram:— 

"Tres   medicus   fades  habet;    unam  quando   rogatur, 
Angelicam;  mox  est,  cum  juvat,  ipse  Deus. 
Post  ubi  curato,  poscit  sua  proemia,  morbo, 
Horridus  apparet,  terribilisque  Sathan." 

"Three  faces  wears  the  doctor:  when  first  sought, 
An  angel's — and  a  God's  the  cure  half  wrought: 
But  when,  that  cure  complete,  he  seeks  his  fee, 
The  Devil  looks  then  less  terrible  than  he." 

Illustrative  of  the  same  truth  is  a  story  told  of 
Bouvart.  On  entering  one  morning  the  chamber  of 
a  French  JIarquis,  whom  he  had  attended  through  a 
very  dangerous  iUness,  he  was  accosted  by  his  noble 
patient  in  the  following  terms:— 

"Good  day  to  you,  Mr.  Bouvart;  I  feel  quite  in 
spirits,  and  think  my  fever  has  left  me." 

"I  am  sure  it  has,"  replied  Bouvart,  dryly.  "The 
very  first  expression  you  used  convinced  me  of  it." 

"Pray,  explain  yourself." 

"Nothing  is  easier.  In  the  first  days  of  your  ill- 
ness, when  your  life  was  in  danger,  I  was  your  dear- 
est friend;  as  you  began  to  get  better,  I  was  your 
good  Bouvart;  and  now  I  am  Mr.  Bouvart:  depend 
upon  it  you  are  quite  recovered." 

In  fact,  the  affection  of  a  patient  for  his  physician 
is  very  like  the  love  a  candidate  for  a  borough  has 


170  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

for  an  individual  elector— he  is  very  grateful  to  him, 
till  he  has  got  all  he  wants  out  of  him.  The  medical 
practitioner  is  unwise  not  to  recognize  this  fact. 
Common  prudence  enjoins  him  to  act  as  much  as  pos- 
sible on  the  maxim  of  "accipe  dum  dolet"— "take 
your  fee  while  your  patient  is  in  pain." 

But  though  physicians  have  always  held  themselves 
open  to  take  as  much  as  they  can  get,  their  ordinary 
remuneration  has  been  fixed  in  divers  times  by  cus' 
torn,  according  to  the  locality  of  their  practice,  the 
rank  of  their  patients,  the  nature  of  the  particular 
services  rendered,  and  such  other  circumstances.  In 
China  the  rule  is  "no  cure,  no  pay,"  save  at  the  Im- 
perial court,  where  the  physicians  have  salaries  thai 
are  cut  off  during  the  continuance  of  royal  indispo- 
sition. For  their  sakes  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  Em- 
peror is  a  temperate  man,  and  does  not  follow  the 
example  of  George  the  Fourth,  who  used  to  drink 
Maraschino  between  midnight  and  four  o'clock  in 
the  morning ;  and  then,  when  he  awoke  with  a  furred 
tongue,  from  disturbed  sleep,  used  to  put  himself 
under  the  hands  of  his  doctors.  Formerly  the  med- 
ical ofScers  of  the  English  monarch  were  paid  by 
salary,  though  doubtless  they  were  offered,  and  were 
not  too  proud  to  accept,  fees  as  well.  Coursus  de 
Gungeland,  Edward  the  Third's  apothecary,  had  a 
pension  of  sixpence  a-day— a  considerable  sum  at 
that  time ;  and  Ricardus  Wye,  the  surgeon  of  the  same 
king,  had  twelve-pence  a  day,  and  eight  marks  per 
annum.  "Duodecim  denarios  per  diem,  et  octo  mar- 
cas  per  annum,  pro  vadiis  suis  pro  vita."  In  the 
royal  courts  of  Wales,  also,  the  fees  of  surgeons  and 
physicians  were  fixed  by  law— a  surgeon  receiving, 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  171 

as  payment  for  curing  a  slight  wound,  only  the  blood- 
stained garments  of  the  injured  person ;  but  for  heal- 
ing a  dangerous  wound  he  had  the  bloody  apparel, 
his  board  and  lodging  during  the  time  his  services 
were  required,  and  one  hundred  and  eighty  pence. 

At  a  very  early  period  in  England  a  doctor  looked 
for  his  palm  to  be  crossed  with  gold,  if  his  patient 
happened  to  be  a  man  of  condition.  In  Henry 
VIII. 's  reign  a  Cambridge  physician  was  presented 
by  the  Earl  of  Cumberland  with  a  fee  of  £1— but  this 
was  at  least  double  what  a  commoner  would  then  have 
paid.  Stow  complains  that  while  in  Holland  half-a- 
crown  was  looked  upon  as  a  proper  remuneration  for 
a  single  visit  paid  by  a  skilled  physician,  the  medical 
practitioners  of  London  scorned  "to  touch  any  metal 
but  gold." 

It  is  no  matter  of  uncertainty  what  the  physician's 
ordinary  fee  was  at  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  and 
the  commencement  of  the  seventeenth  century.  It 
was  ten  shillings,  as  is  certified  by  the  following  ex- 
tract from  "Physick  lies  a-bleeding:  the  Apothecary 
turned  Doctor"— published  in  1697:  — 

"Gallipot — Good  sir,  be  not  so  unreasonably  pas- 
sionate and  I'll  tell  you.  Sir,  the  Pearl  Julep  will 
be  6s.  8d.,  Pearls  being  dear  since  our  dipt  money 
was  bought.  The  Specific  Bolus,  4s.  6d.,  I  never 
reckon  less;  my  master  in  Leadenhall  Street  never 
set  down  less,  be  it  what  it  would.  The  Antihysterick 
Application  3s.  6d.  (a  common  one  is  but  2s.  6d.), 
and  the  iVnodyne  Draught  3s.  4d.— that's  all,  sir;  a 
small  matter  and  please  you,  sir,  for  your  lady.  My 
fee  is  what  you  please,  sir.    All  the  bill  is  hut  18s. 

"Trweman- Faith,  then,  d'ye  make  a  but  at  it! 


172  A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

I  do  suppose,  to  be  very  genteel,  I  must  give  you  a 
crown. 

"Gallipot— li  your  worship  please;  I  take  it  to  be 
a  fair  and  an  honest  bill. 

"Trueman— Do  you  indeed?  But  I  wish  you  had 
called  a  doctor,  perhaps  he  would  have  advised  her  to 
have  forebore  taking  anything,  as  yet  at  least,  so  I 
had  saved  13s.  in  my  pocket." 

"Physick  lies  a-bleeding"  was  written  during  the 
great  Dispensarian  War,  which  is  touched  upon  in 
another  part  of  these  pages;  and  its  object  was  to 
hold  up  physicians  as  models  of  learning  and  probity, 
and  to  expose  the  extortionate  practices  of  the  apoth- 
ecaries. It  must  therefore  be  read  with  caution,  and 
with  due  allowance  for  the  license  of  satire,  and  the 
violence  of  a  party  statement.  But  the  statement 
that  10s.  was  the  customary  fee  is  clearly  one  that 
may  be  accepted  as  truthful.  Indeed,  the  unknown 
and  needy  doctors  were  glad  to  accept  less.  The 
author  of  "The  Dispensarians  are  the  Patriots  of 
Britain,"  published  in  1708,  represents  the  humbler 
physicians  being  nothing  better  than  the  slaves  of 
the  opulent  apothecaries,  accepting  half  their  right 
fee,  and  taking  instead  25  or  50  per  cent,  of  the 
amount  paid  for  drugs  to  the  apothecary.  "They 
(the  powerful  traders),"  says  the  writer,  "offered 
the  Physicians  5s.  and  10s.  in  the  pound,  to  excite 
their  industry  to  prescribe  the  larger  abundance  to 
all  the  disorders." 

But  physicians  daily  received  more  than  their  ten 
shillings  at  a  time.  In  confirmation  of  this,  a  good 
anecdote  may  be  related  of  Sir  Theodore  Mayerne. 
Sir  Theodore  Mayerne,  a  native  of  Geneva,  was  phy- 


A   BOOK   ABOXJT  DOCTORS.  173 

sician  to  Henry  IV.  and  Louis  XIII.  of  France,  and 
subsequently  to  James  I.,  Charles  I.,  and  Charles  II. 
of  England.  As  a  physician,  who  had  the  honour  of 
attending  many  crowned  heads,  he  ranks  above  Caius, 
who  was  physician  to  Edward  VI.,  Mary,  and  Eliza- 
beth—Ambrose Pare,  the  inventor  of  ligatures  for 
severed  arteries,  who  was  physician  and  surgeon  to 
Henry  II.,  Francis  II.,  Charles  IX.,  and  Henry  III. 
of  France— and  Sir  Henry  Halford,  who  attended 
successively  George  III.,  George  IV.,  "William  IV., 
and  Victoria.  It  is  told  of  Sir  Theodore,  that  when  a 
friend,  after  consulting  him,  foolishly  put  two  broad 
gold  pieces  (six-and- thirty  shillings  each)  on  the 
table,  he  quietly  pocketed  them.  The  patient,  who, 
as  a  friend,  expected  to  have  his  fee  refused,  and 
therefore  (deeming  it  well  to  indulge  in  the  magnifi- 
cence of  generosity  when  it  would  cost  him  nothing) 
had  absurdly  exhibited  so  large  a  sum,  did  not  at  all 
relish  the  sight  of  its  being  netted.  His  countenance, 
if  not  his  tongue,  made  his  mortification  manifest. 
"Sir,"  said  Sir  Theodore,  "I  made  my  will  this 
morning;  and  if  it  should  appear  that  I  refused  a 
fee,  I  might  be  deemed  non  compos." 

The  "Levamen  Infirmi,"  published  in  1700,  shows 
that  a  century  had  not,  at  that  date,  made  much  dif- 
ference in  the  scale  of  remuneration  accorded  to  sur- 
geons and  physicians.  "To  a  graduate  in  physick," 
this  authority  states,  "his  due  is  about  ten  shillings, 
though  he  commonly  expects  or  demands  twenty. 
Those  that  are  only  licensed  physicians,  their  due  is 
no  more  than  six  shillings  and  eight-pence,  though 
they  commonly  demand  ten  shillings.  A  surgeon's 
fee  is  twelve-pence  a  mile,  be  his  journey  far  or  near; 


174  A  BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

ten  groats  to  set  a  bone  broke,  or  out  of  joint;  and 
for  letting  blood  one  shilling;  the  cutting  off  or  am- 
putation of  any  limb  is  five  pounds,  but  there  is  no 
settled  price  for  the  cure."  These  charges  are  much 
the  same  as  those  made  at  the  present  day  by  country 
surgeons  to  their  less  wealthy  patients,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  a  fee  for  setting  a  bone,  or  reducing  a  dis- 
location, which  is  absurdly  out  of  proportion  to  the 
rest  of  the  sums  mentioned. 

Mr  William  Wadd,  in  his  very  interesting  "Mem- 
orabilia," states,  that  the  physicians  who  attended 
Queen  Caroline  had  five  hundred  guineas,  and  the 
surgeons  three  hundred  guineas  each;  and  that  Dr. 
Willis  was  rewarded  for  his  successful  attendance  on 
his  Majesty  King  George  III.,  by  £1500  per  annum 
for  twenty  years,  and  £650  per  annum  to  his  son  for 
life.  The  other  physicians,  however,  had  only  thirty 
guineas  each  visit  to  "Windsor,  and  ten  guineas  each 
visit  to  Kew. 

These  large  fees  put  us  in  mind  of  one  that  ought 
to  have  been  paid  to  Dr.  King  for  his  attendance  on 
Charles  the  Second.  Eveh-n  relates-"  1685,  Feb.  4. 
I  went  to  London,  hearing  his  JIajesty  had  ben,  the 
Monday  before  (2  Feb.),  surprised  in  his  bed-cham- 
ber with  an  apoplectic  fit;  so  that  if,  by  God's  provi- 
dence, Dr  King  (that  excellent  chirurgeon  as  well  as 
physitian)  had  not  been  actually  present,  to  let  his 
bloud  (having  his  lancet  in  his  pocket),  his  Majesty 
had  certainly  died  that  moment,  which  might  have 
ben  of  direful  consequence,  there  being  nobody  else 
present  with  the  king  save  this  doctor  and  one  more, 
as  I  am  assured.  It  was  a  mark  of  the  extraordinary 
dexterity,   resolution,  and  presence   of  mind  in  tho 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  175 

Dr  to  let  liim  bloud  in  the  very  paroxysm,  without 
staying  the  coming  of  other  physicians,  which  reg- 
ularly should  have  ben  done,  and  for  want  of  which 
he  must  have  a  regular  pardon,  as  they  tell  me." 
For  this  promptitude  and  courage  the  Privy-Council 
ordered  £1000  to  be  given  to  Dr.  King— but  he  never 
obtained  the  money. 

In  a  more  humourous,  but  not  less  agreeable  man- 
ner, Dr.  Hunter  (John  Hunter's  brother),  was  dis- 
appointed of  payment  for  his  professional  services. 
On  a  certain  occasion  he  was  suffering  under  such 
severe  indisposition  that  he  was  compelled  to  keep 
his  bed,  when  a  lady  called  and  implored  to  be  admit- 
ted to  his  chamber  for  the  benefit  of  his  advice.  After 
considerable  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  servants, 
she  obtained  her  request ;  and  the  sick  physician,  sit- 
ting up  in  his  bed,  attended  to  her  case,  and  pre- 
scribed for  it.  "What  is  your  fee,  sir?"  the  lady 
asked  when  the  work  was  done.  The  doctor,  with  the 
prudent  delicacy  of  his  order,  informed  his  patient 
that  it  was  a  rule  with  him  never  to  fix  his  fee ;  and, 
on  repeated  entreaty  that  he  would  depart  from  his 
custom,  refused  to  do  so.  On  this  the  lady  rose  from 
her  seat,  and  courteously  thanking  the  doctor,  left 
him— not  a  little  annoyed  at  the  result  of  his  squeam- 
ishness  or  artifice. 

This  puts  us  in  mind  of  the  manner  in  which  an 
eminent  surgeon  not  long  since  was  defrauded  of  a 
fee,  under  circumstances  that  must  rouse  the  indigna- 
tion of  every  honourable  man  against  the  delinquent. 
Mr. received,  in  his  consulting  room,  a  gentle- 
man of  military  and  prepossessing  exterior,  who, 
after  detailing  the  history  of  his  sufferings,  implored 


176  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

the  professional  man  he  addressed  to  perform  for 
him  a  certain  difficult  and  important  operation.  The 
surgeon  consented,  and  on  being  asked  what  remun- 
eration he  would  require,  said  that  his  fee  was  a  hun- 
dred guineas. 

"Sir,"  replied  the  visitor  with  some  embarrass- 
ment, "I  am  very  sorry  to  hear  you  say  so.  I  feel 
sure  my  case  without  you  will  terminate  fatally ;  but 
I  am  a  poor  half-pay  officer,  in  pecuniary  difficulties, 
and  I  could  not,  even  if  it  were  to  save  my  soul,  raise 
half  the  sum  you  mention." 

''My  dear  sir,"  responded  the  surgeon  frankly, 
and  with  the  generosity  which  is  more  frequently 
found  amongst  medical  practitioners  than  any  other 
class  of  men,  "don't  then  disturb  yourself.  I  can- 
not take  a  less  fee  than  I  have  stated,  for  my  char- 
acter demands  that  I  should  not  have  two  charges, 
but  I  am  at  libei-ty  to  remit  my  fee  altogether.  Allow 
me,  then,  the  very  great  pleasure  of  attending  a  re- 
tired officer  of  the  British  army  gratuitously." 

This  kindly  offer  was  accepted.    Mr. not  only 

performed  the  operation,  but  visited  his  patient 
daily  for  more  than  three  weeks  without  ever  ac- 
cepting a  guinea— and  three  months  after  he  had 
restored  the  sick  man  to  health,  discovered  that,  in- 
stead of  being  in  necessitous  circumstances,  he  was 
a  magistrate  and  deputy-lieutenant  for  his  county, 
and  owner  of  a  fine  landed  estate. 

"And,  by !"  exclaimed  the  fine-hearted  sur- 
geon—when he  narrated  this  disgraceful  affair,  "I'll 
act  exactly  in  the  same  way  to  the  next  poor  man  who 
gives  me  his  word  of  honour  that  he  is  not  rich 
enough  to  pay  me." 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTOKS.  177 

The  success  of  Sir  Astley  Cooper  was  beyond  that 
of  any  medical  practitioner  of  modern  times;  but  it 
came  very  gradually.  His  earnings  for  the  first  nine 
years  of  his  professional  career  progressed  thus:  — 
In  the  first  year  he  netted  five  guineas ;  in  the  second, 
twenty-six  pounds;  in  the  third,  sixty- four  pounds; 
in  the  fourth,  ninety-six  pounds ;  in  the  fifth,  a  hun- 
dred pounds;  in  the  sixth,  two  hundred  pounds;  in 
the  seventh,  four  hundred  pounds;  in  the  eighth,  six 
hundred  and  ten  pounds;  and  in  the  ninth,  the  year 
in  which  he  secured  his  hospital  appointment,  eleven 
hundred  pounds.  But  the  time  came  when  the  pa- 
tients stood  for  hours  in  his  ante-rooms  waiting  to 
have  an  interview  with  the  great  surgeon,  and  after 
all,  their  patients  were  dismissed  without  being  ad- 
mitted to  the  consulting-room.  Sir  Astley 's  man. 
Charles,  with  all  the  dignity  that  became  so  eminent 
a  man's  servant,  used  to  say  to  these  disappointed 
applicants,  in  a  tone  of  magnificent  patronage,  when 
they  reappeared  the  next  morning  after  their  effect- 
less visit,  "I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  we  shall  be  able 
to  attend  to-day  to  you,  gentlemen,  for  ive  are  exces- 
sively busy,  and  our  list  is  perfectly  full  for  the  day ; 
but  if  you'll  wait  I  will  see  what  can  be  done  for 
you!" 

The  highest  amount  that  Sir  Astley  received  in 
any  one  yoar  was  £21,000.  This  splendid  income  was 
an  exceptional  one.  For  many  years,  however,  he 
achieved  more  than  £15,000  per  annum.  As  long  as 
he  lived  in  the  City  after  becoming  celebrated  he 
made  an  enormous,  but  fluctuating,  revenue,  the  state 
of  the  money-market  having  an  almost  laughable 
effect  on  the  size  of  the  fees  paid  him.    The  capital- 


178  A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

ists  who  visited  the  surgeon  in  Broad  Street,  in  three 
cases  out  of  four,  paid  in  cheques,  and  felt  it  beneath 
their  dignity  to  put  pen  to  paper  for  a  smaller  sum 
than  five  guineas.  After  Sir  Astley  moved  to  the 
West  End  he  had  a  more  numerous  and  at  the  same 
time  more  aristocratic  practice ;  but  his  receipts  were 
never  so  much  as  they  were  when  he  dwelt  within 
the  Lord  Mayor's  jurisdiction.  His  more  distin- 
guished patients  invariably  paid  their  guineas  in 
cash,  and  many  of  them  did  not  consider  it  incon-. 
sistent  with  patrician  position  to  give  single  fees. 
The  citizens  were  the  fellows  to  pay.  Mr.  William 
Coles,  of  Mincing  Lane,  for  a  long  period  paid  Sir 
Astley  £600  a  year,  the  visits  of  the  latter  being  prin- 
cipally made  to  Mr.  Cole's  seat  near  Croydon.  An- 
other "City  man,"  who  consulted  the  surgeon  in 
Broad  Street,  and  departed  without  putting  down 
any  honorarium  whatever,  sent  a  cheque  for  £63  10s.. 
with  the  following  characteristic  note:— 

"Dear  Sib— When  I  had  first  the  pleasure  of  see- 
ing you,  you  requested,  as  a  favour,  that  I  would  con- 
sider your  visit  on  the  occasion  as  a  friend.  I  now, 
sir,  must  request  you  will  return  the  compliment  by 
accepting  the  enclosed  draft  as  an  act  of  friendship. 
It  is  the  profit  on  £2000  of  the  ensuing  loan,  out  of 
a  small  sum  Sir  P.  Baring  had  given,  of  appropri- 
ating for  your  chance." 

The  largest  fee  Sir  Astley  Cooper  ever  received 
was  paid  him  by  a  West  Indian  millionaire  named 
Hyatt.  This  gentleman  having  occasion  to  undergo 
a  painful  and  perilous  operation,  was  attended  by 
Drs.  Lettsom  and  Nelson  as  physicians,  and  Sir  Astley 
as  chirurgeon.     The  wealthy  patient,  his  treatment 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  179 

having  resulted  most  successfully,  was  so  delighted 
that  he  fee'd  his  physicians  with  300  guineas  each. 
"But  you,  sir,"  cried  the  grateful  old  man,  sitting 
up  in  his  bed,  and  speaking  to  his  surgeon,  "shall 
have  something  better.  There,  sir— take  that."  The 
that  was  the  convalescent's  night-cap,  which  he  flung 
at  the  dexterous  operator.  "Sir,"  replied  Sir  Astley, 
picking  up  the  cap,  "I'll  pocket  the  affront."  It 
was  well  he  did  so,  for  on  reaching  home  he  found  in 
the  cap  a  draft  for  1000  guineas.  This  story  has 
been  told  in  various  ways,  but  all  its  tellers  agree  as 
to  the  amount  of  the  prize. 

Catherine,  the  Empress  of  Russia,  was  even  more 
munificent  than  the  West  Indian  planter.  When  Dr. 
Dimsdale,  for  many  years  a  Hertford  physician,  and 
subsequently  the  parliamentary  representative  of  that 
borough,  went  over  to  Russia  and  inoculated  the  Em- 
press and  her  son,  in  the  year  1768,  he  was  rewarded 
with  a  fee  of  £12,000,  a  pension  for  life  of  £500  per 
annum,  and  the  rank  of  Baron  of  the  Empire.  But 
if  Catherine  paid  thus  handsomely  for  increased  se- 
curity of  life,  a  modern  emperor  of  Austria  put  dowi/ 
a  yet  more  royal  fee  for  his  death-warrant.  When 
on  his  death-bed  the  Emperor  Joseph  asked  Quarin 
his  opinion  of  his  case,  the  physician  told  the  monarch 
that  he  could  not  possibly  live  forty-eight  hours.  In 
acknowledgment  of  this  frank  declaration  of  the 
truth,  the  Emperor  created  Quarin  a  Baron,  and  gavo 
him  a  pension  of  more  than  £2000  per  annum  to 
support  the  rank  with. 

A  goodly  collection  might  be  made  of  eccentric 
fees  given  to  the  practitioners  of  the  healing  art. 
William  Butler,  who,  in  his  moroseness  of  manner, 


180  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

was  the  prototype  of  Abernethy,  found  {vide  Puller's 
"English  Worthies")  more  pleasure  in  "presents 
than  money;  loved  what  was  pretty  rather  than  what 
was  costly;  and  preferred  rarities  to  riches."  The 
number  of  physicians  is  large  who  have  won  the 
hands  of  heiresses  in  the  discharge  of  their  profes- 
sional avocations.  But  of  them  we  purpose  to  speak 
at  length  hereafter.  Joshua  Ward,  the  Thames 
Street  drysalter,  who  made  a  fortune  by  his  "Drop 
and  Pill," 

"Of  late,  without  the  least  pretence  to  skill, 
Ward's  grown  a  famed  physician  by  a  pill," 

was  so  successfully  puffed  by  Lord  Chief  Baron 
Reynolds  and  General  Churchill,  that  he  was  called 
in  to  prescribe  for  the  king.  The  royal  malady  dis- 
appeared in  consequence,  or  in  spite,  of  the  treat- 
ment ;  and  Ward  was  rewarded  with  a  solemn  vote  of 
the  House  of  Commons,  protecting  him  from  the 
interdictions  of  the  College  of  Physicians;  and,  as  an 
additional  fee,  he  asked  for,  and  obtained,  the  privi- 
lege of  driving  his  carriage  through  St.  James's  Park. 
The  pertinacity  with  which  the  members  of  the 
medical  profession  cling  to  the  shilling  of  "the 
guinea"  is  amusing.  When  Erskine  used  to  order 
"The  Devil's  Own"  to  charge,  he  would  cry  out 
"Six-and-eightpence!"  instead  of  the  ordinary  word 
of  command.  Had  his  Lordship  been  colonel  of  a 
volunteer  corps  of  physicians,  he  would  have  roused 
them  to  an  onward  march  by  "A  guinea!"  Some- 
times patients  object  to  pay  the  extra  shilling  over 
the  sovereign,  not  less  than  their  medical  advisers 
insist  on  having  it.  "We  surgeons  do  things  by 
guineas,"    we   recollect   a   veteran   hospital   surgeon 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  181 

saying  to  a  visitor  who  had  put  down  the  largest  cur- 
rent gold  piece  of  our  present  coinage.  The  patient 
(an  irritable  old  gentleman)  made  it  a  question  of 
principle;  he  hated  humbug— he  regarded  "that  shill- 
ing" as  sheer  humbug,  and  he  would  not  pay  it.  A 
contest  ensued,  which  terminated  in  the  eccentric  pa- 
tient paying,  not  the  shilling,  but  an  additional  sov- 
ereign. And  to  this  day  he  is  a  frequent  visitor  of 
our  surgical  ally,  and  is  well  content  to  pay  his  two 
sovereigns,  though  he  would  die  rather  than  counte- 
nance "a  sham"  by  putting  down  "a  guinea." 

But  of  all  the  stories  told  of  surgeons  who  have 
grown  fat  at  the  expense  of  the  public,  the  best  is 
the  following  one,  for  which  Mr.  Alexander  Kellet, 
who  died  at  his  lodgings  in  Bath,  in  the  year  1788. 
is  our  authority.  A  certain  French  surgeon  residing 
in  Georgia  was  taken  prisoner  by  some  Indians,  who. 
having  acquired  from  the  French  the  art  of  larding 
their  provisions,  determined  to  lard  this  particular 
Frenchman,  and  then  roast  him  alive.  During  the 
culinary  process,  when  the  man  was  half  larded,  the 
operators  were  surprised  by  the  enemy,  and  their 
victim,  making  his  escape,  lived  many  days  in  the 
woods  on  the  bacon  he  had  in  his  skin. 

If  full  reliance  may  be  placed  on  the  following  hu- 
morous vei'ses,  it  is  not  imknown  for  a  physician 
to  be  paid  in  commodities,  without  the  intervention 
of  the  circulating  medium,  or  the  receipt  of  such 
creature  comforts  as  Johnson's  friendly  apothecary 
was  wont  to  accept  in  lieu  of  cash:  — 

"An  adept  in  the  sister  arts. 
Painter,  poet,  and  musician, 
Employ'd  a  doctor  of  all  parts. 
Druggist,  surgeon,  and  physician. 


182  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

"The  artist  with  M.D.  agrees, 

If  he'fl  attend  him  when  he  grew  sick, 
Fully  to  liquidate  his  fees 
With  painting,  poetry,  and  music. 

"The  druggist,  surgeon,  and  physician. 
So  often  physick'd,  bled,  prescribeid, 
That  painter,  poet,  and  musician 

(Alas!  poor  artist!)  sunk — and  died. 

"But  ere  death's  stroke,  'Doctor,'  cried  he, 

'In  honour  of  your  skill  and  charge. 
Accept  from  my  professions  three — 
A  hatchment,  epitaph,  and  dirge.'  " 

A  double  fee  for  good  news  has  long  been  a  rule 

in  the  profession.     A  father  just  presented  with  an 

heir,  or  a  lucky  fellow  just  made  one,  is  expected  to 

bleed  freely  for  the  benefit  of  the  Faculty. 

"Madam  scolded  one  day  so  long. 
She  sudden  lost  all  use  of  tongue! 
The  doctor  came — with  hum  and  haw, 
Pronounc'd  th'  affection  a  lock'd  jaw! 

"'What  hopes,  good  sir?' — 'Small,  small,  I  see!' 
The  husband  slips  a  double  fee  ; 
'What,  no  hopes,  doctor?' — 'None,  I  fear;' 
Another  fee  for  issue  clear. 

"Madam  deceased — 'Pray,  sir,  don't  grieve!' 
'My  friends,  one  comfort  I   receive — 
A  lock'd  jaw  was  the  only  case 
From  which  my  wife  could  die — in  peace.'  " 


CHAPTER  X. 

PEDAGOGUES  TURNED  DOCTORS. 

In  the  church  of  St.  Mary  Magdalen,  Taunton,  is 
a  monumental  stone  engraved  with  the  following  in- 
scription :— 

"Qui  medicus  doctus,   prudentis  nomine  clarus, 
Eloquii  splendor,  Pieridumque  decus, 
Virtutis  cultor,  pietatis  vixit  amicus; 
Hoc  jacet  in  tumulo,  spiritus  alta  tenet." 

It  is  in  memory  of  John  Bond,  M.A.,  the  learned 
commentator  on  Horace  and  Persius.  Educated  at 
Winchester  school,  and  then  at  New  College,  Oxford, 
he  was  elected  master  of  the  Taunton  Grammar-school 
in  the  year  1579.  For  many  years  he  presided  over 
that  seminary  with  great  efiSciency,  and  sent  out  into 
the  world  several  eminent  scholars.  On  arriving, 
however,  at  the  middle  age  of  life,  he  relinquished 
the  mastership  of  the  school,  and  turned  his  attention 
to  the  practice  of  medicine.  His  reputation  and  suc- 
cess as  a  physician  were  great — the  worthy  people  of 
Taunton  honouring  him  as  "a  wise  man."  He  died 
August  3,  1612. 

More  than  a  century  later  than  John  Bond,  school- 
master and  physician,  appeared  a  greater  celebrity 


184  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

in  the  person  of  James  Jurin,  who,  from  the  position 
of  a  provincial  pedagogue,  raised  himself  to  be  re- 
garded as  first  of  the  London  physicians,  and  con- 
spicuous amongst  the  philosophers  of  Europe.  Jurin 
was  born  in  1684,  and  received  his  early  education 
at  Christ's  Hospital— better  kno^^^l  to  the  public  as 
the  Bluecoat  school.  After  graduating  in  arts  at 
Cambridge,  he  obtained  the  mastership  of  the  gram- 
mar-school of  Newcastle-upon-Tyne,  January,  1710. 
In  the  following  year  he  acquired  the  high  academic 
distinction  of  a  fellowship  on  the  foundation  of  Trin, 
ity  College;  and  the  year  after  (1712)  he  published 
through  the  University  press,  his  edition  of  Vare- 
nius's  Geography,  dedicated  to  Bentley.  In  1718 
and  1719  he  contributed  to  the  Philosophical  Trans- 
actions the  essays  which  involved  him  in  controversies 
with  Keill  and  Senac,  and  were,  in  the  year  1732, 
reprinted  in  a  collected  form,  under  the  title  of 
"Physico-Mathematical  Dissertations."  Another  of 
his  important  contributions  to  science  was  "An  Essay 
on  Distinct  and  Indistinct  Vision,"  added  to  Smith's 
"System  of  Optics."  Voltaire  was  not  without  good 
reason  for  styling  him,  in  the  Journal  de  Savans, 
"the  famous  Jurin." 

Besides  working  zealously  in  his  school,  Jurin  de- 
livered lectures  at  Newcastle,  on  Experimental  Phil- 
osophy. He  worked  very  hard,  his  immediate  object 
being  to  get  and  save  money.  As  soon  as  he  had  laid 
by  a  clear  thousand  pounds,  he  left  Newcastle,  and  re- 
turning to  his  University  devoted  himself  to  the  study 
of  medicine.  From  that  time  his  course  was  a  pros- 
perous one.  Having  taken  his  M.D.  degree,  he  settled 
in  London,  became  a  Fellow  of  the  College  of  Phy- 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  185 

sicians,  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  (to  which  dis- 
tinguished body  he  became  secretary  on  the  resigna^ 
tion  of  Dr.  Ilalley  in  1721),  and  a  Physician  of  Guy's 
Hospital,  as  well  as  Governor  of  St.  Thomas's.  The 
friend  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  and  Bentley  did  not  lack 
patients.  The  consulting-rooms  and  ante-chambers 
of  his  house  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  received  many 
visitors;  so  that  he  acquired  considerable  wealth,  and 
had  an  estate  and  an  imposing  establishment  at  Clap- 
ton. Nichols  speaks  of  him  in  one  of  his  volumes  as 
"James  Jurin,  M.D.,  sometime  of  Clapton  in  Hack- 
ney." It  was,  however,  at  his  town  residence  that 
he  died,  March  22,  1750,  of  what  the  Gentleman's 
Magazine  calls  "a  dead  palsy,"  leaving  by  his  will  a 
considerable  legacy  to  Christ's  Hospital. 

One  might  make  a  long  list  of  Doctors  Pedagogic, 
including  poor  Oliver  Goldsmith,  who  used  to  wince 
and  redden  with  shame  and  anger  when  the  canf 
phrase,  "It's  all  a  holiday  at  Peckham,"  saluted  his 
ears.  Between  Bond  and  Jurin,  however,  there  were 
two  tutors  turned  physicians,  who  may  not  be  passed 
over  without  especial  attention.  Only  a  little  prior  to 
Jurin  they  knew  many  of  his  friends,  and  doubtless 
met  him  often  in  consultation.  They  were  both  au- 
thors—one of  rare  wit,  and  the  other  (as  he  himself 
boasted )  of  no  wit ;  and  they  hated  each  other,  as  lit- 
erary men  know  how  to  hate.  In  every  respect,  even 
down  to  the  quarters  of  town  which  they  inhabited, 
lliey  were  opposed  to  each  other.  One  was  a  brilliant 
talker  and  frequented  St.  James's;  the  other  was  a 
pompous  drone,  and  haunted  the  Mansion-house:  a 
Jacobite  the  one,  a  Whig  the  other.     The  reader  sees 


1S6  A  BOOK  ABOUT  D0CT0B3. 

that  these  two  worthies  can  be  none  other  than  Ar- 
buthnot  and  Blackmore. 

A  wnly,  courtly,  mirth-loving  Scotchman,  Arbuth- 
not  had  all  the  best  qualities  that  are  to  be  ordinarilj 
found  in  a  child  of  North  Britain.  Everybody  knew 
him— nearly  every  one  liked  him.  His  satire,  that 
was  only  rarely  tinctured  with  bitterness— his  tongue, 
powerful  to  mimic,  flatter,  or  persuade— his  polished 
manners  and  cordial  bearing,  would  alone  have  made 
him  a  favourite  with  the  ladies,  had  he  not  been  what 
he  was— one  of  the  handsomest  men  about  town.  (Of 
course,  in  appearance  he  did  not  approach  that  mag- 
nificent gentleman.  Beau  Fielding).  In  conversation 
he  was  frank  without  being  noisy;  and  there  hung 
about  him— tavern-haunting  wit  though  he  was— an 
air  of  simplicity,  tempering  his  reckless  fun,  that  was 
very  pleasant  and  very  winning.  Pope,  Parnell,  Garth, 
Gay,  were  society  much  more  to  his  taste  than  the 
stately  big-wigs  of  Warwick  Hall.  And  next  to  drink- 
ing wine  with  such  men,  the  good-humoured  doctor 
enjoyed  flirting  with  the  maids  of  honour,  and  taking 
part  in  a  political  intrigue.  No  wonder  that  Swift 
valued  him  as  a  priceless  treasure— "loved  him,"  as 
he  wrote  to  Stella,  "ten  times  as  much"  as  jolly,  tip- 
pling Dr.  Freind. 

It  was  arm  in  arm  with  him  that  the  Dean  used  to 
peer  about  St.  James's,  jesting,  snarling,  laughing, 
causing  dowagers  to  smile  at  "that  dear  Mr.  Dean," 
and  young  girls,  up  for  their  first  year  at  Court- 
green  and  unsophisticated— to  blush  with  annoyancd 
at  his  coarse,  shameless  badinage ;  bowing  to  this  great 
man  (from  whom  he  hoped  for  countenance),  staring 
insolently  at  that  one   (from  whom  he  was  sure  ol 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  187 

nothing  but  enmity  1,  quoting  Martial  to  a  mitred 
courtier  (because  the  prelate  couldn't  understand 
Latin),  whispering  French  to  a  youthful  diplomatist 
(because  the  boy  knew  no  tongue  but  English),  pre- 
paring impromptu  compliments  for  "royal  Anna" 
(as  our  dear  worthy  ancestors  used  to  call  Mrs.  Mash- 
am 's  intimate  friend),  or  with  his  glorious  blue  eyes 
sending  a  glance,  eloquent  of  admiration  and  homage^ 
at  a  fair  and  influential  supporter;  cringing,  fawn- 
ing, flattering— in  fact,  angling  for  the  bishopric  he 
was  never  to  get.  With  Arbuthnot  it  was  that  Swift 
tried  the  dinners  and  wine  of  every  hotel  round 
Covent  Garden,  or  in  the  city.  From  Arbuthnot  it 
was  that  the  Dean,  during  his  periods  of  official  exile, 
received  his  best  and  surest  information  of  the  bat- 
tles of  the  cliques,  the  scandals  of  the  Court,  the  con- 
tentions of  parties,  the  prospects  of  ministers,  and 
(most  important  subject  by  far)  the  health  of  the 
Queen. 

Some  of  the  most  pleasant  pictures  in  the  "Journal 
to  Stella"  are  those  in  which  the  kindly  presence  of 
the  Doctor  softens  the  asperity  of  the  Dean.  Most 
readers  of  these  pages  have  accompanied  the  two 
"brothers"  in  their  excursion  to  the  course  the  day 
before  the  horse-races,  when  they  overtook  Miss  For- 
rester, the  pretty  maid  of  honour,  and  made  her  ac- 
company them.  The  lady  was  taking  the  air  on  her 
palfrey,  habited  in  the  piquant  riding-dress  of  the 
period— the  natty  three-cornered  cocked  hat,  orna- 
mented with  gold  lace,  and  perched  on  the  top  of  a 
long  flowing  periwig,  powdered  to  the  whiteness  of 
snow,  the  long  coat  cut  like  a  coachman's,  the  waist- 
coat flapped  and  faced,  and  lastly  the  habit-skirt.  One 


188  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

sees  the  belle  at  this  time  smiling  archly,  with  all  the 
power  of  beauty,  and  shaking  the  handle  of  her  whip 
at  the  divine  and  the  physician.  So  they  took  her 
with  them  (and  they  weren't  wrong  in  doing  so). 
Then  the  old  Queen  came  by,  gouty  and  hypochon- 
driac. Ofif  went  the  hats  of  the  two  courtiers  in  the 
presence  of  her  Majesty.  The  beauty,  too,  raised  her 
little  three-cornered  cock-boat  (rising  on  her  stirrup 
as  she  did  so),  and  returned  it  to  the  summit  of  the 
flowing  wig,  with  a  knowing  side-glance,  as  much  as 
to  say,  "See,  sirs,  we  women  can  do  that  sort  of  thing 
quite  as  gracefully  as  the  lords  of  the  creation."  (Oh, 
Mr.  Spectator,  how  could  you  find  it  in  you  to  quar- 
rel with  that  costume?)  Swift  was  charmed,  and 
described  enough  of  the  scene  to  make  that  foolish 
Stella  frantically  jealous;  and  then,  prudent,  canny 
love-tyrant  that  he  was,  added  with  a  sneer— "I  did 
not  like  her,  though  she  be  a  toast,  and  was  dressed 
like  a  man."  And  you  may  be  sure  that  poor  little 
Stella  was  both  fool  enough  and  wise  enough  both  to 
believe  and  disbelieve  this  assurance  at  the  same 
time. 

Arbuthnot  owed  his  success  in  no  degree  whatever 
to  the  influence  of  his  family,  and  only  in  a  very  slight 
degree  to  his  professional  knowledge.  His  father 
was  only  a  poor  episcopalian  clergyman,  and  his  M.D 
degree  was  only  an  Aberdeen  one.  He  rose  by  his 
wit,  rare  conversational  powers,  and  fascinating  ad- 
dress, achieving  eminence  at  Court  because  he  was 
the  greatest  master  of  fence  with  the  weapon  that  is 
most  used  in  courts— the  tongue.  He  failed  to  get  a 
living  amongst  rustic  boors,  who  appreciated  no  effort 
of  the  human  voice  but  a  fox-hunter's  whoop.    Dor- 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  189 

Chester,  where  as  a  young  man  he  endeavoured  to  es 
tablish  himself  in  practice,  refused  to  give  him  an 
income,  but  it  doubtless  maintained  more  than  one 
aull  empiric  in  opulence.  In  London  he  met  with  a 
different  reception.  For  a  time  he  was  very  poor,  and 
resorted  to  the  most  hateful  of  all  occupations— the 
personal  instruction  of  the  ignorant.  How  long  he 
was  so  engaged  is  uncertain.  Something  of  Gold- 
smith's "Peckham"  sensibility  made  him  not  care 
in  after-life  to  talk  of  the  days  when  he  was  a  teacher 
of  mathematics— starving  on  pupils  until  he  should 
be  permitted  to  grow  fat  on  patients. 

The  patients  were  not  long  in  coming.  The  literary 
reputation  he  obtained  by  his  "Examination  of  Dr 
Woodward's  Account  of  the  Deluge,"  elicited  by 
Woodward's  "Essay  towards  a  Natural  History  of 
the  Earth,"  instead  of  frightening  the  sick  from  him, 
brought  them  to  him.  Accidentally  called  in  to  Prince 
George  of  Denmark,  when  his  Royal  Highness  wa9 
suddenly  taken  ill  at  Epsom,  he  made  himself  so 
agreeable  that  the  casual  introduction  became  a  per- 
manent connection.  In  1709,  on  the  illness  of  Hannes 
(a  physician  who  also  understood  the  art  of  rising  in 
spite  of  obstacles)  he  was  appointed  physiciaji-in-or- 
dinary  to  Queen  Anne. 

To  secure  the  good  graces  of  his  royal  patient,  and 
rise  yet  higher  in  them,  he  adopted  a  tone  of  affection 
for  her  as  a  person,  as  well  as  loyal  devotion  to  her 
as  a  queen.  The  fall  of  Radcliffe  warned  him  that 
he  had  need  of  caution  in  dealing  with  the  weak- 
minded,  querulous,  crotchety,  self-indulgent  invalid. 

"What's  the  time?"  asked  the  Queen  of  him  one 
day. 


190  A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

" Whatever  it  may  please  your  Majesty,"  answered 
the  court-physician,  with  a  graceful  bow. 

After  all,  the  best  testimony  of  a  man's  merit  is 

the  opinion  held  of  him  by  those  of  his  acquaintance 

who  know  him  intimately— at  home  as  well  as  abroad. 

By  all  who  came  within  the  circle  of  Arbuthnot's 

privacy  he  was  respected  as  much  as  loved.    And  hi? 

associates  were  no  common  men.     Pope,  addressing 

him  as  "the  friend  of  his  life,"  says:— 

"Why  did  I  write?  what  sin,  to  me  unknown, 
Dipp'd  me  in  inlv? — my  parents'  or  my  own? 
As  yet  a  child,  nor  yet  a  fool  to  fame, 
I  lisp'd  in  numbers,  for  the  numbers  came. 
I  left  no  calling  for  this  idle  trade. 
No  duty  broke,  no  father  disobey'd. 
The  muse  but  served  to  ease  some  friend,  not  wife. 
To  help  me  through  this  long  disease,  my  life, 
To  second,  Arbuthnot !  thy  art  and  care, 
And  teach  the  being  you  preserved  to  bear." 

Pope's  concluding  wish — 
"Oh,  friend !  may  each  domestic  bliss  be  thine," 
was  ineffectual.  Arbuthnot's  health  failed  under  hia 
habits  of  intemperance,  and  during  his  latter  years  he 
was  a  terrible  sufferer  from  asthma  and  melancholy. 
After  the  Queen's  death  he  went  for  the  benefit  of 
his  health  on  the  continent,  and  visited  his  brother, 
a  Paris  banker.  Returning  to  London  he  took  a  house 
in  Dover  Street,  from  which  he  moved  to  the  residence 
in  Cork  Street,  Burlington  Gardens,  where  he  died 
Feb.  27,  1734 — 5.  He  died  in  straitened  circum- 
stances; for  unlike  his  fellow-countryman.  Colonel 
Chartres,  he  had  not  the  faculty  of  saving.  But  with 
failing  energies,  an  excruciated  frame,  and  the  heart- 
burden  of  a  family  unprovided  for,  he  maintained  a 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  191 

pliilosophic   equanimity,   and   displayed  his  old  un- 
varying consideration  for  all  who  surrounded  him. 

Arbuthnot's  epitaph  on  Colonel  Chartres  (almost 
as  well  known  as  Martinus  Seriblerus)  is  a  good  speci- 
men of  his  humour: — 

"Here  continueth  to  rot, 

The  Body  of  Francis  Chartres. 

Who,  with  an  indefatigable  constancy, 

And  inimitable  Uniformity  of  life. 

Persisted, 

In  spite  of  Age  and  Infirmities, 

In  the  practice  of  every  Human  Vice, 

Excepting   Jrrodigality  and   Hypocrisy: 

His  insatiable  Avarice  exempting  him   from  the  First, 

His  matchless  impudence  from  the  Second. 

Nor  was  he  more  singular  in  the  Undeviating  Pravity 

Of  his  manners,  than  successful 

In  accumulating  Wealth : 

For,  without  Trade  or  Profession, 

Without  trust  of  public  money. 

And  without  bribe-worthy  service. 

He  acquired,  or  more  properly  created, 

A  ministerial  estate. 

He  was  the  only  person  of  this  time 

Who  could  cheat  without  the  Mask  of  Honesty, 

Retain  his  primaeval  meanness  when  possessed  of 

Ten  thousand  a-year: 

And  having  duly  deserved  the  Gibbet  for  what  he  did. 

Was  at  last  condemned  to  it  for  what  he  could  not  do. 

Oh,  indignant  reader ! 

Think  not  his  life  useless  to  mankind: 

Providence  connived  at  his  execrable  designs. 

To  give  to  After-age  a  conspicuous 

Proof  and  Example 

■Of  how  small  estimation  is  exorbitant  Wealth 

In  the  sight  of  God,  by  His  bestowing  it  on 

The  most  unworthy  of   Mortals." 

The  history  of  the  worthy  person  whose  reputation 
is  here  embalmed  is  interesting.  Beginning  life  as  an 
ensign  in  the  army,  he  was  drummed  out  of  his  regi- 
ment, banished  Brussels,  and  ignominiously  expelled 
from  Ghent,  for  cheating.  As  a  miser  he  saved,  and 
as  a  usurer  he  increased,  the  money  which  he  won 


192  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

as  a  blackleg  and  card-sharper.  Twice  was  he  con- 
demned to  death  for  heinous  offences,  but  contrived  to 
purchase  pardon;  and,  after  all,  he  was  fortunate 
enough  to  die  in  his  own  bed,  in  his  native  country, 
Scotland,  a.  d.  1731,  aged  sixty-two.  At  his  funeral 
the  indignant  mob,  feeling  that  justice  had  not  been 
done  to  the  dear  departed,  raised  a  riot,  insulted  the 
mourners,  and,  when  the  coffin  was  lowered  into  the 
grave,  threw  upon  it  a  magnificent  collection  of  dead 
dogs! 

In  a  similar  and  scarcely  less  magnificent  vein  of 
humour,  Arbuthnot  wrote  another  epitaph— on  a  grey- 
hound :— 

"To  the  memory  of 

Signer  Fido, 

An  Italian  of  Good  Extraction : 

Who  came  into  England, 

Not  to  bite  us,  like  most  of  his  countrymen. 

But  to  gain  an  honest  livelihood: 

He  hunted  not  after   fame, 

Yet  acquired  it : 

Regardless  of  the  Praise  of  his  Friends, 

But  most  sensible  of  their  love: 

Tho'  he  liv'd  amongst  the  great, 

He  neither  learn'd  nor  flatter'd  any  vice: 

He  vfiLS  no  Bigot, 

Tho'  he  doubted  of  none  of  the  thirty-nine  articles; 

And  if  to  follow  Nature, 

And  to  respect  the  laws  of  Society, 

Be  Philosophy, 

He  was  a  perfect  Philosopher, 

A  faithful  Friend, 

An  agreeable  Companion, 

A  loving  Husband, 

Distinguished  by  a  numerous  Offspring, 

All  of  which  he  lived  to  see  take  good  courses; 

In  his  old  age  he  retired 

To  the  House  of  a  Qergyman  in  the  Country, 

Where  he  finished  his  earthly  Race, 

And  died  an  Honour  and  an  Example  to  the  whole  Species. 

Reader, 

This  stone  is  guiltless  of  Flattery, 

For  he  to  whom  it  is  inscribed 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  193 

Was  not  a  man, 
But  a 
Greyhound." 

In  the  concluding  lines  there  is  a  touch  of  Sterne. 
They  also  call  to  mind  Byron's  epitaph  on  his  dog. 

These  epitaphs  put  the  writer  in  mind  of  the  liter- 
ary ambition  of  the  eminent  Dr.  James  Gregory  of 
Edinburgh.  His  great  aim  was  to  be  the  Inscriptor 
(as  he  styled  it)  of  his  age.  No  distinguished  person 
died  without  the  doctor  promptly  striking  off  his  char- 
acteristics in  a  mural  legend.  For  every  statue  erect- 
ed to  heroes,  real  or  sham,  he  composed  an  inscrip- 
tion, and  interested  himself  warmly  to  have  it  adopt- 
ed. Amongst  the  public  monuments  on  which  his 
compositions  may  be  found  are  the  Nelson  Monument 
at  Edinburgh,  and  the  Duke  of  Wellington 's  shield  at 
Gibraltar.  On  King  Robert  Bruce,  Charles  Edward 
Stuart,  his  mother,  Sir  James  Poulis  de  Collington, 
and  Robertson  the  historian,  he  also  produced  com- 
memorative inscriptions  of  great  excellence.  As  a 
very  fair  specimen  of  his  style  the  inscription  on  the 
Scott  Flagon  is  transcribed:— 

"Gualterum  Scott, 

De  Abbotsford, 

Virum  summi  Ingenii 

Scriptorem  Elegantem 

Poetarum  sui  seculi  facile  Principem 

Patriae  Decus 

Ob  varia  ergo  ipsam  merita 

In  civium  suorum  numerum 

Grata  adscripsit  Civitas  Edinburgensis 

Et  hoc  Cantharo  donavit 

A.   D.   MDCCCXIIL" 

Sir  Richard  Blackmore,  the  other  pedagogue  phy- 
sician,  was  one  of  those  good,  injudicious  mortals  who 
always  either  praise  or  blame  too  much— usually  the 
latter.    The  son  of  a  Wiltshire  attorney,  he  was  edu- 

4— IS 


194  A   BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

cated  at  "Westminster  School  and  Oxford,  taking  his 
degree  of  M.A.  June,  1676,  and  residing,  in  all,  thir- 
teen years  in  the  university,  during  a  portion  of  which 
protracted  period  of  residence  he  was  (though  Dr. 
Johnson  erroneously  supposed  the  reverse)  a  laborious 
student.  On  leaving  Oxford  he  passed  through  a 
course  of  searching  poverty,  and  became  a  schoolmas- 
ter. In  this  earlier  part  of  his  life  he  travelled  in 
France,  Germany,  the  Low  Countries,  and  Italy,  and 
took  his  doctor's  degree  in  the  University  of  Padua. 
On  turning  his  attention  to  medicine,  he  consulted 
Sydenham  as  to  what  authors  he  ought  to  read.  ' '  Don 
Quixote,"  replied  the  veteran.  A  similar  answer 
has  been  attributed  to  Lord  Erskine  on  being  asked 
by  a  law  student  the  best  literary  sources  for  acquir- 
ing legal  knowledge  and  success.  The  scepticism 
of  the  reply  reminds  one  of  Garth,  who,  to  an  anxious 
patient  inquiring  what  physician  he  had  best  call  in 
in  case  of  his  (Garth's)  death,  responded,  "One  is 
e'en  as  good  as  t'other,  and  surgeons  are  not  less 
knowing." 

As  a  poet,  Blackmore  failed,  but  as  a  physician  he 
was  for  many  years  one  of  the  most  successful  men 
in  his  profession.  Living  at  Sadler's  Hall,  Gheapside, 
he  was  the  oracle  of  all  the  wealthiest  citizens,  and 
was  blessed  with  an  affluence  that  allowed  him  to  drive 
about  town  in  a  handsome  equipage,  and  make  an  im- 
posing figure  to  the  world.  Industrious,  honourable, 
and  cordially  liked  by  his  personal  friends,  he  was  by 
no  means  the  paltry  fellow  that  Dryden  and  Pope 
represented  him.  Johnson,  in  his  brilliant  memoir, 
treated  him  very  unfairly,  and  clearly  was  annoyed 
that  his  conscience  would  not  allow  him  to  treat  him 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  195 

worse.  On  altogether  insufQeient  grounds  the  doctor 
argued  that  his  knowledge  of  ancient  authors  was 
superficial,  and  for  the  most  part  derived  from  sec- 
ondary sources.  Passages  indeed  are  introduced  to 
show  that  the  ridicule  and  contempt  showered  on  the 
poet  by  his  adversaries,  and  re-echoed  by  the  laugh- 
ing world,  were  unjust;  but  the  effect  of  these  admis- 
sions, complete  in  themselves,  is  more  than  counter- 
balanced by  the  sarcasms  (and  some  of  them  vulgar 
sarcasms  too)  which  the  biographer,  in  imitation  of 
Colonel  Codrington,  Sir  Charles  Sedley,  and  Colonel 
Blount,  directs  against  the  city  knight. 

A  sincerely  religious  man,  Blackmore  was  offender) 
with  the  gross  licentiousness  of  the  drama,  and  all 
those  productions  of  the  poets  which  constituted  tht 
light  literature  of  the  eighteenth  century.  To  his 
■eternal  honour,  Blackmore  was  the  first  man  who  hac^ 
the  courage  to  raise  his  voice  against  the  evil,  and 
give  utterance  to  a  manly  indignation  at  the  insults 
offered  nightly  in  every  theatre  to  public  decency 
Unskilled  in  the  use  of  the  pen,  of  an  age  when  he 
could  not  hope  to  perfect  himself  in  an  art  to  which 
he  had  not  in  youth  systematically  trained  himself, 
and  immersed  in  the  cares  of  an  extensive  practice, 
he  set  himself  to  work  on  the  production  of  a  poem' 
which  should  elevate  and  instruct,  not  vitiate  and 
deprave  youthful  readers.  In  this  Spirit  "Prince 
Arthur"  was  composed  and  published  in  1695,  when 
the  author  was  between  forty  and  fifty  years  of  age. 
It  was  written,  as  he  frankly  ack-nowledged,  "by  such 
catches  and  starts,  and  in  such  occasional  uncertain 
hours  as  his  profession  afforded,  and  for  the  greatest 
part   in   coffee-houses,   or  in  passing  up   and  down 


196  A    BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

streets."  The  wits  laughed  at  him  for  writing  "to 
the  rumbling  of  his  chariot- wheels, "  but  at  this  date, 
ridicule  thrown  on  a  man  for  doing  good  at  odd  scraps 
of  a  busy  day,  has  a  close  similarity  to  the  laughter  of 
fools.  Let  any  reader  compare  the  healthy  gentle- 
manlike tone  of  the  preface  to  "Prince  Arthur,"  with 
the  mean  animosity  of  all  the  virulent  criticisms  and 
sarcasms  that  were  directed  against  the  author  and 
his  works,  and  then  decide  on  which  side  truth  and 
good  taste  lie. 

Blackmore  made  the  fatal  error  of  writing  too 
much.  His  long  poems  wearied  the  patience  of  those 
who  sympathized  with  his  goodness  of  intention.  What 
a  list  there  is  of  them,  in  Swift's  inscription,  "to  be 
put  under  Sir  Richard's  picture !" 

"See,  who  ne'er  was,  or  will  be  half  read, 
Who  first  sung  Arthur,  then  sung  Alfred,' 
Praised  great  Eliza  "in  God's  anger. 
Till  all  true  Englishmen  cried,  hang  her ! 
*  *  *  * 

Then  hiss'd  from  earth,  grown  heavenly  quite. 

Made  every  reader  curse  the  light.' 

Mauled  human  wit  in  one  thick  satire  ;* 

Next,  in  three  books,  spoil'd  human  nature;" 

Ended  Creation  "at  a  jerk, 

And  of  Redemption 'made  damn'd  work: 

Then  took  his  muse  at  once,  and  dipp'd  her 

Full  in  the  middle  of  the  Scripture. 

What  wonders  there  the  man  grown  old  did ! 

Sternhold  himself  he  out-sternholded ; 

Made  David  *  seem  so  mad  and  freakish, 

All  thought  him  just  what  thought  king  Achish. 

'  Two  heroic  Poems,  folio,  twenty  books. 

'  An  heroic  Poem,  in  twelve  books. 

'  Hymn  to  Light. 

'  Satire  against  Wit. 

'  Of  the  Nature  of  Man. 

'  Creation,  in  seven  books. 

'  Redemption,  in  six  books. 

•  Translation  of  all  the  Psalms. 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  197 

No  mortal  read  his  Solomon,' 
But  judged  R'oboam  his  own  son. 
Moses'"  he  served,  as  Moses  Pharaoh, 
And  Deborah  as  she  Sisera : 
Made  Jeremyi'   full  sore  to  cry, 
And  Job  '■  himself  curse  God  and  die." 
Nor  is  this  by  any  means  a  complete  list  of  Sir 
Richard's  works;  for  he  was  also  a  voluminous  med- 
ical writer,  and  author  of  a  "History  of  the  Conspir- 
acy against  the  Person  and  Government  of  King  Wil- 
liam  the   Third,   of   glorious   memory,   in    the   year 
1695." 

Dryden,  unable  to  clear  himself  of  the  charge  of 
pandering  for  gain  to  the  licentious  tastes  of  the  age, 
responded  to  his  accuser  by  calling  him  an  "ass,"  a 
"pedant,"  a  "quack,"  and  a  "canting  preacher." 
"Quack  Maurus,  though  he  never  took  degrees 
In  either  of  our  universities. 
Yet  to  be  shown  by  some  kind  wit  he  looks, 
Because  he  play'd  the  fool,  and  writ  three  books. 
But  if  he  would  be  worth  a  poet's  pen, 
He  must  be  more  a  fool,  and  write  aeain; 
For  all  the  former  fustian  stuff  he  wrote 
Was  dead-born  doggerel,  or  is  quite  forgot : 
His  man  of  Uz,  stript  of  his  Hebrew  robe. 
Is  just  the  proverb,  and  'as  poor  as  Job.' 
One  would  have  thought  he  could  no  longer  jog; 
But  Arthur  was  a  level.  Job's  a  bog. 
There  though  he  crept,  yet  still  he  kept  in  sight; 
But  here  he  founders  in,  and  sinks  downright. 

*  *  *  * 

At  leisure  hours  in  epic  song  he  deals, 
Writes  to  the  rumbling  of  his  coach's  wheels. 

*  *  *  * 

Well,  let  him  go — 'tis  yet  too  early  day 

To  get  himself  a  place  in  farce  or  play; 

We  know  not  by  what  name  we  should  arraign  him. 

For  no  one  category  can  contain  him. 

A  pedant,  canting  preacher,  and  a  quack. 

Are  load  enough  to  break  an  ass's  back. 

Canticles  and  Ecclesiastes. 
'°  Canticles  of  Moses,  Deborah.  &c. 
"  The  Lamentations. 
"  The  Whole  Book  of  Job.  in  folio. 


198  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

At  last,  grown  wanton,  he  presumed  to  write, 
Traduced  two  kings,  their  kindness  to  requite; 
One  made  the  doctor,  and  one  dubbed  the  knight." 

The  former  of  the  kings  alluded  to  is  James  the 
Second,  Blackmore  having  obtained  his  fellowship  of 
the  College  of  Physicians,  April  12,  1687,  under  the 
new  charter  granted  to  the  college  by  that  monarch: 
the  latter  being  "William  the  Third,  who,  in  recogni- 
tion of  the  doctor's  zeal  and  influence  as  a  Whig,  not 
less  than  of  his  eminence  in  his  profession,  made  him 
a  physician  of  the  household,  and  knighted  him. 

Pope  says  :— 

"The  hero  William,  and  the  martyr  Charles, 
One  knighted  Blackmore,  and  one  pension'd  Quarles." 

The  bard  of  Twickenham  had  of  course  a  few  ill 

words  for  Blackmore.    In  the  Dunciad  he  says:— 

"Ye  critics,  in  whose  heads,  as  equal  scales, 
I  weigh  what  author's  heaviness  prevails; 
Which  most  conduce  to  soothe  the  soul  in  slumbers, 
My  H ley's  periods,  or  my  Blackmore's  numbers." 

Elsewhere,  in  the  same  poem,  the  little  wasp  of 
poetry  continues  his  hissing  song:— 

"But  far  o'er  all,  sonorous  Blackmore's  strain, 
Walls,  steeples,  skies,  bray  back  to  him  again. 
In  Tot'nham  fields,  the  brethren,  with  amaze, 
Prick  all  their  ears  up,  and  forget  to  graze; 

'Long  Cnancery  Lane  retentive  rolls  the  sound. 
And  courts  to  courts  return  it  round  and  round; 
Thames  wafts  it  thence  to  Rufus'  roaring  hall, 
And  Hungerford  re-echoes  bawl  for  bawl ; 
All  hail  him  victor  in  both  gifts  and  song. 
Who  sings  so  loudly,  and  who  sings  so  long." 

Such  being  the  tone  of  the  generals,  the  reader  can 

imagine  that  of  the  petty  scribblers,  the  professional 

libellers,  the  coffee-house  rakes,  and  literary  amateurs 

of  the  Temple,  who  formed  the  rabble  of  the  vast 

army  against  which  the  doctor  had  pitted  himself,  in 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  199 

defence  of  public  decency  and  domestic  morality.  Un- 
der the  title  of  ' '  Commendatory  Verses,  on  the  author 
of  the  two  Arthurs,  and  the  Satyr  against  Wit,  by 
come  of  his  particular  friends,"  were  collected,  in 
the  year  1700,  upwards  of  forty  sets  of  ribald  verses, 
taunting  Sir  Richard  with  his  early  poverty,  with  his 
having  been  a  school-master,  with  the  unspeakable 
baseness  of— living  in  the  city.  The  writers  of  these 
wretched  dirty  lampoons,  that  no  kitchen-maid  could 
in  our  day  read  without  blushing,  little  thought  what 
they  were  doing.  Their  obscene  stupidity  has  secured 
for  them  the  lasting  ignominy  to  which  they  imagined 
they  were  consigning  their  antagonist.  What  a  crew 
they  are!— with  chivalric  Steel  and  kindly  Garth,  for- 
getting their  better  natures,  and  joining  in  the  mis- 
erable riot !  To  "  The  City  Quack ";  "  The  Cheapside 
Knight";  "The  Illustrious  Quack,  Pedant,  Bard"; 
"The  Merry  Poetaster  of  Sadler's  Hall"— such  are 
the  titles  by  which  they  address  the  doctor,  who  had 
presumed  to  say  that  authors  and  men  of  wit  ought  tu 
find  a  worthier  exercise  for  their  intellects  than  the 
manufacture  of  impure  jests. 

Colonel  Codrington  makes  his  shot  thus— 

"By  Nature  meant,  by  Want  a  Pedant  made, 

Blackmore  at  first  profess'd  the  whipping  trade; 

*  *  *  * 

In  vain  his  drugs  as  well  as  Birch  he  try'd — 
His  boys  grew  blockheads,  and  his  patients  dy'd. 
Ne.xt  he  turn'd  Bard,  and,  mounted  on  a  cart, 
Whose  hideous  rumbling  made  Apollo  start, 
Burlesqued  the  Bravest,  Wisest  son  of  Mars, 
In  ballad  rhymes,  and  all  the  pomp  of  Farce. 

*  *  *  « 

The  same  dull  sarcasms  about  killing  patients  and 
whipping  boys  into  blockheads  are  repeated  over  and 


200  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

over  again.  As  if  to  show,  with  the  greatest  possible 
force,  the  pitch  to  which  the  evil  of  the  times  had 
risen,  the  coarsest  and  most  disgusting  of  all  these 
lampoon-writers  was  a  lady  of  rank— the  Countess 
of  Sandwich.  By  the  side  of  her  Ladyship,  Af ra  Behn 
and  Mistress  Manley  become  timid  blushing  maidens. 
A  better  defence  of  Sir  Richard  than  the  Countess's 
attack  on  him  it  would  be  impossible  to  imagine. 

And  after  all— the  slander  and  the  maledictions- 
Sir  Richard  Blackmore  gained  the  victory,  and  the 
wits  who  never  wearied  of  calling  him  "a  fool"  were 
defeated.  The  preface  to  "Prince  Arthur"  provoked 
discussion;  the  good  sense  and  better  taste  of  the 
country  were  roused,  and  took  the  reformer's  side  of 
the  controversy.  Pope  and  his  myrmidons,  it  was 
true,  were  still  able  to  make  the  ieau  monde  merry 
about  the  city  knight's  presumption— but  they  could 
not  refute  the  city  knight's  arguments;  and  they 
themselves  were  compelled  to  shape  their  conduct,  as 
writers,  in  deference  to  a  new  public  feeling  which  he 
was  an  important  instrument  in  calling  into  existence. 
"Prince  Arthur"  appeared  in  1695,  and  to  the  com- 
motion caused  by  its  preface  may  be  attributed  much 
of  the  success  of  Jeremy  Collier's  "Short  View  of  the 
Immorality  and  Profaneness  of  the  Stage,"  which 
was  published  some  three  years  afterwards. 

As  a  poet  Sir  Richard  Blackmore  can  command  on- 
ly that  praise  which  the  charitable  bestow  on  good- 
ness of  intention.  His  muse  was  a  pleasant,  well- 
looking,  right-minded  young  lady,  but  nothing  more. 
But  it  must  be  remembered,  before  we  measure  out 
our  criticisms  on  his  productions,  that  he  never  arro- 
gated to  himself  the  highest  honours  of  poesy.     "I 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  201 

am  a  gentleman  of  taste  and  culture,  and  though  T 
cannot  ever  hope  to  build  up  the  nervous  lines  of  Dry- 
den,  or  attain  the  polish  and  brilliance  of  Congreve, 
I  believe  I  can  write  what  the  generation  sorely  needs 
—works  that  intelligent  men  may  study  with  improve- 
ment, devout  Christians  may  read  without  being  of- 
fended, and  pure-minded  girls  may  peruse  without 
blushing  from  shame.  'Tis  true  I  am  a  hard-worked 
doctor,  spending  my  days  in  coffee-houses,  receiving 
apothecaries,  or  driving  over  the  stones  in  my  car- 
riage,  visiting  my  patients.  Of  course  a  man  so  cir- 
cumstanced  must  fail  to  achieve  artistic  excellence, 
but  still  I'll  do  my  best."  Such  was  the  language 
with  which  he  introduced  himself  to  the  public. 

His  best  poem.  The  Creation,  had  such  merit  that 
his  carping  biographer,  Johnson,  says,  "This  poem,  if 
he  had  written  nothing  else,  would  have  transmitted 
him  to  posterity  one  of  the  first  favourites  of  the  Eng- 
lish muse";  and  Addison  designated  the  same  poem 
"one  of  the  most  useful  and  noble  productions  in  our 
English  verse." 

Of  Sir  Richard's  private  character  Johnson  re- 
marks—"In  some  part  of  his  life,  it  is  not  known 
when,  his  indigence  compelled  him  to  teach  a  school^ 
a  humiliation  with  which,  though  it  certainly  lasted 
but  a  little  while,  his  enemies  did  not  forget  to  re- 
proach him  when  he  became  conspicuous  enough  to  ex- 
cite malevolence;  and  let  it  be  remembered,  for  his 
honour,  that  to  have  been  a  schoolmaster  is  the  only 
reproach  which  all  the  perspicacity  of  malice,  ani- 
mated by  wit,  has  ever  fixed  upon  his  private  life." 


CHAPTER  XI. 

THE  GENEROSITT  AND  THE  PAESIMONT  OP 
PHYSICIANS. 

Of  the  generosity  of  physicians  one  need  say  noth- 
ing, for  there  are  few  who  have  not  experienced  or 
witnessed  it;  and  one  had  letter  say  nothing,  as  no 
words  could  do  justice  to  such  a  subject.  This  writer 
can  speak  for  at  last  one  poor  scholar,  to  whose  sick- 
bed physicians  have  come  from  distant  quarters  of 
the  town,  day  after  day,  never  taking  a  coin  for  their 
precious  services,  and  alwaj'S  in  their  graceful  benevo- 
lence seeming  to  find  positive  enjoyment  in  their  un« 
paid  labour.  In  gratitude  for  kindness  shown  to  him- 
self, and  yet  more  for  beneficence  exhibited  to  those 
whom  he  loves,  that  man  of  the  goose-quill  and 
thumbed  books  would  like  to  put  on  record  the  names 
of  certain  members  of  "the  Faculty"  to  whom  he  is 

so  deeply  indebted.    Ah,  dear  Dr. and  Dr. 

and  Dr. ,  do  not  start!— your  names  shall  not  be 

put  down  on  this  cheap  common  page.  Where  they 
are  engraved,  you  know! 

Cynics  have  been  found  in  plenty  to  rail  at  physi- 
cians for  loving  their  fees ;  and  one  might  justly  retort 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTOES.  203 

on  the  Cynics,  that  they  love  nothing  hut  their  fees. 
Who  doesn't  love  the  sweet  money  earned  by  his  la- 
bour—be it  labour  of  hand  or  brain,  or  both?  One 
thing  is  sure— that  doctors  are  underpaid.  The  most 
successf al  of  them  in  our  own  time  get  far  less  than 
their  predecessors  of  any  reign,  from  Harry  the 
Eighth  downwards.  And  for  honours,  though  the 
present  age  has  seen  an  author  raised  to  the  peerage, 
no  precedent  has  as  yet  been  established  for  ennobling 
eminent  physicians  and  surgeons. 

Queen  Elizabeth  gave  her  physician-in-ordinary 
£100  per  annum,  besides  diet,  wine,  wax,  and  other 
perquisites.  Her  apothecary,  Hugo  Morgan,  must  too 
have  made  a  good  thing  out  of  her.  For  a  quarter's 
bill  that  gentleman  was  paid  £83  7s.  8d.,  a  large  sum 
in  those  days;  but  then  it  was  for  such  good  things. 
What  Queen  of  England  could  grudge  eleven  shill* 
ings  for  "a  confection  made  like  a  manus  Christi,  with 
bezoar  stone  and  unicorn's  horn"?— sixteen  pence 
for  "a  royal  sweetmeat  with  incised  rhubarb"?— 
twelve  pence  for  "Rosewater  for  the  King  of  Na- 
varre's ambassador"?— six  shillings  for  "a  conserve 
of  barberries,  with  preserved  damascene  plums,  and 
other  things  for  Mr.  Raleigh"?— two  shillings  and 
sixpence  for  "sweet  scent  to  be  used  at  the  christening 
of  Sir  Richard  Knightley's  son"? 

Coytier,  the  physician  of  Charles  the  XI.  of  France, 
was  better  paid  by  far.  The  extent  to  which  he 
fleeced  that  monarch  is  incredible.  Favour  after  fa- 
vour he  wrung  from  him.  When  the  royal  patient 
resisted  the  modest  demands  of  his  physician,  the  lat- 
ter threatened  him  with  speedy  dissolution.  On  this 
menace  the  king,  succvunbing  to  that  fear  of  death 


204  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

which  characterized  more  than  one  other  of  his  fam- 
ily, was  sure  to  make  the  required  concession.  Theo- 
dore Hook's  valet,  who  was  a  good  servant  in  the  first 
year  of  his  service,  a  sympathizing  friend  in  the  sec- 
ond, and  a  hard  tyrant  in  the  third,  was  a  timid  slave 
compared  with  Coytier.  Charles,  in  order  to  be  freed 
from  his  despotism,  ordered  him  to  be  dispatched.  The 
ofiSeer,  intrusted  with  the  task  of  carrying  out  the  roy- 
al wishes,  waited  on  Coytier,  and  said,  in  a  most  gen- 
tlemanlike and  considerate  manner,  ' '  I  am  very  sorry, 
my  dear  fellow,  but  I  must  kill  you.  The  king  can't 
stand  you  any  longer."  "All  right,"  said  Coytier, 
with  perfect  unconcern,  "whenever  you  like.  What 
time  would  it  be  most  convenient  for  you  to  kill  me? 
But  still,  I  am  deuced  sorry  for  his  Majesty,  for  I 
know  by  occult  science  that  he  can't  outlive  me  more 
than  four  days."  The  ofScer  was  so  struck  with  the 
announcement,  that  he  went  away  and  forth^vith  im- 
parted it  to  the  king.  "Liberate  him  instantly— don't 
hurt  a  hair  of  his  head!"  cried  the  terrified  monarch. 
And  Coytier  was  once  again  restored  to  his  place  in 
the  king 's  confidence  and  pocket. 

Henry  Atkins  managed  James  the  First  with  some 
dexterity.  Atkins  was  sent  for  to  Scotland,  to  attend 
Charles  the  First  (then  an  infant),  who  was  danger- 
ously ill  of  a  fever.  The  king  gave  him  the  handsome 
fee  of  £6000.  Atkins  invested  the  money  in  the  pur- 
chase of  the  manor  of  Clapham. 

RadeliflPe,  with  a  rare  effort  of  generosity,  attended 
a  friend  for  a  twelvemonth  gratuitously.  On  making 
his  last  visit  his  friend  said,  "Doctor,  here  is  a  purse 
in  which  I  have  put  every  day's  fee;  and  your  good- 
ness must  not  get  the  better  of  my  gratitude.     Take 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  205 

your  money."  Radcliffe  looked,  made  a  resolve  to 
persevere  in  benevolence,  just  touched  the  purse  to 
reject  it,  heard  the  chink  of  the  gold  pieces  in  it,  and 
put  the  bag  into  his  pocket.  "Singly,  .sir,  I  could 
have  refused  them  for  a  twelvemonth ;  but,  all  togeth- 
er, they  are  irresistible,"  said  the  doctor,  walking  off 
with  a  heavy  prize  and  a  light  heart. 

Louis  XIV.  gave  his  physician  and  his  surgeon 
75,000  crowns  each,  after  successfully  undergoing  a 
painful  and  at  that  time  novel  operation.  By  the 
side  of  such  munificence,  the  fees  paid  by  Napoleon  I. 
to  the  Faculty  who  attended  Marie  Louise  in  March, 
1811,  when  the  Emperor's  son  was  born,  seem  insuf- 
ficient. Dubois,  Corvisart,  Bourdier,  and  Ivan  were 
the  professional  authorities  employed,  and  they  had 
among  them  a  remuneration  of  £4000,  £2000  being  the 
portion  assigned  to  Dubois. 

Even  more  than  fee  gratefully  paid  does  a  humor- 
ous physician  enjoy  an  extra  fee  adroitly  drawn  from 
the  hand  of  a  reluctant  payer.  Sir  Richard  Jebb  was 
once  paid  three  guineas  by  a  nobleman  from  whom 
he  had  a  right  to  expect  five.  Sir  Richard  dropped 
the  coins  on  the  carpet,  when  a  servant  picked  them 
up  and  restored  them— three,  and  only  three.  Instead 
of  walking  off  Sir  Richard  continued  his  search  on 
the  carpet.  "Are  all  the  guineas  found?"  asked  his 
Lordship  looking  round.  "There  must  be  two  still 
on  the  floor,"  was  the  answer,  "for  I  have  only 
three."  The  hint  of  course  was  taken  and  the  right 
sum  put  down.  An  eminent  Bristol  doctor  accom- 
plished a  greater  feat  than  this,  and  took  a  fee  from— 
a  dead  commoner,  not  a  live  lord.  Coming  into  his  pa- 
tient's  bed-room  immediately  after  death  had  taken. 


206  A   BOOK   ABOUT    DOCTORS. 

place,  he  found  the  right  hand  of  the  deceased  tightly 
clenched.  Opening  the  fingers  he  discovered  with- 
in them  a  guinea.  "Ah,  that  was  for  me— clearly," 
said  the  doctor  putting  the  piece  into  his  pocket. 

Reminding  the  reader,  in  its  commencement,  of  Sir 
Richard  Jebb's  disappointment  at  the  three-guinea 
fee,  the  following  story  may  here  be  appropriately 
inserted.  A  physician  on  receiving  two  guineas,  when 
he  expected  three,  from  an  old  lady  patient,  who  was 
accustomed  to  give  him  the  latter  fee,  had  recourse  to 
one  part  of  Sir  Richard's  artifice,  and  assuming  that 
the  third  guinea  had  been  dropt  through  his  careless- 
ness on  the  floor,  looked  about  for  it.  "Nay,  nay," 
said  the  lady  with  a  smile,  "you  are  not  in  fault.  It 
is  I  who  dropt  it." 

There  is  an  abundance  of  good  stories  of  physicians 
fleecing  their  lambs.  To  those  that  are  true  the  com- 
ment may  be  made— "Doubtless  the  lambs  were  all 
the  better  for  being  shorn."  For  the  following  anec- 
dote we  are  indebted  to  Dr.  Moore,  the  author  of  "Ze- 
luco."  A  wealthy  tradesman,  after  drinking  the  Bath 
waters,  took  a  fancy  to  try  the  eflfect  of  the  Bristol  hot 
wells.  Armed  with  an  introduction  from  a  Bath  phy- 
sician to  a  professional  brother  at  Bristol,  the  invalid 
set  out  on  his  journey.  On  the  road  he  gave  way  ta 
his  curiosity  to  read  the  doctor's  letter  of  intro- 
duction, and  cautiously  prying  into  it  read  these  in- 
structive words:  "Dear  sir,  the  bearer  is  a  fat  Wilt- 
shire clothier— make  the  most  of  him.'' 

Benevolence  was  not  a  virtue  in  old  Monsey's  line;_ 
but  he  could  be  generous  at  another's  expense,  when 
the  enjoyment  his  malignity  experienced  in  paining 
one  person  counterbalanced  his  discomfort  at  giving 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  207 

pleasure  to  another.  Strolling  through  Oxford  mar- 
ket he  heard  a  poor  woman  ask  the  price  of  a  piece  of 
meat  that  lay  on  a  butcher's  stall. 

"A  penny  a  pound!"  growled  the  man  to  whom 
the  question  was  put,  disdaining  to  give  a  serious 
answer  to  such  a  poverty-stricken  customer. 

"Just  weigh  that  piece  of  beef,  my  friend,"  said 
Monsey,  stepping  up. 

"Ten  pounds  and  a  half,  sir,"  observed  the  butcher, 
after  adjusting  the  scales  and  weights. 

"Here,  my  good  woman,"  said  Monsey,  "out  with 
your  apron,  and  put  the  beef  into  it,  and  make  haste 
home  to  your  family." 

Blessing  the  benevolent  heart  of  the  eccentric  old 
gentleman,  the  woman  did  as  she  was  bid,  took  pos- 
session of  her  meat,  and  was  speedily  out  of  sight. 

"And  there,  my  man,"  said  Monsey,  turning  tc 
the  butcher,  "is  tenpence  halfpenny,  the  price  of  youi 
beef." 

"Wiat  do  you  mean?"  demanded  the  man. 

"Simply  that  that's  all  I'll  pay  you.  Tou  said  the 
meat  was  a  penny  a  pound.  At  that  price  I  bought 
it  of  you— to  give  to  the  poor  woman.  Good  morn- 
ing!" 

A  fee  that  Dr.  Fothergill  took  of  Mr.  Grenville  was 
earned  without  much  trouble.  Fothergill,  like  Lett- 
som,  was  a  Quaker,  and  was  warmly  supported  by  his 
brother  sectarians.  In  the  same  way  Mead  was 
brought  into  practice  by  the  Nonconformists,  to  whom 
his  father  ministered  spiritually.  Indeed,  Mead's  sat- 
irists affirmed  that  when  his  servant  (acting  on  in- 
structions) had  called  him  out  from  divine  service, 
the  parson  took  his  part  in  the  "dodge"  by  asking 


208  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

the  congregation  to  pray  for  the  bodily  and  ghostly 
welfare  of  the  patient  to  whom  his  son  had  just  been 
summoned.  Dissenters  are  remarkable  for  giving 
staunch  support,  and  thorough  confidence,  to  a  doctor 
of  their  own  persuasion.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  Amer- 
ican war,  therefore  Grenville  knew  that  he  could  not 
consult  a  better  authority  than  the  Quaker  doctor, 
Fothergill,  on  the  state  of  feeling  amongst  the  Quaker 
colonists.  Fothergill  was  consequently  summoned 
to  prescribe  for  the  politician.  The  visit  took  the  form 
of  an  animated  discussion  on  American  affairs,  which 
was  brought  to  a  conclusion  by  Grenville 's  putting  five 
guineas  into  the  physician's  hand,  saying— "Really, 
doctor,  I  am  so  much  better,  that  I  don't  want 
you  to  prescribe  for  me."  With  a  canny  significant 
smile  Fothergill,  keeping,  like  a  true  Quaker,  firm 
hold  of  the  money,  answered,  "At  this  rate,  friend, 
I  -will  spare  thee  an  hour  now  and  then. ' ' 

Dr.  Glynn,  of  Cambridge,  was  as  benevolent  as  he 
was  eccentric.  His  reputation  in  the  fen  districts 
as  an  ague  doctor  was  great,  and  for  some  years  he 
made  a  large  professional  income.  On  one  occasion 
a  poor  peasant  woman,  the  widowed  mother  of  an 
only  son,  trudged  from  the  heart  of  the  fens  into  Cam- 
bridge, to  consult  the  doctor  about  her  boy,  who  was 
ill  of  an  ague.  Her  manner  so  interested  the  phy- 
sician, that  though  it  was  during  an  inclement  win- 
ter, and  the  roads  were  almost  impassable  to  car- 
riages, he  ordered  horses,  and  went  out  to  see  the  sick 
lad.  After  a  tedious  attendance,  and  the  exhibition 
of  much  port  wine  and  bark  (bought  at  the  doctor's 
expense),  the  patient  recovered,  and  Glynn  took  his 
leave.    A  few  days  after  the  farewell  visit,  the  poor 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTOBS.  209 

■woman   again   presented   herself  in   the   consulting 
room. 

"I  hope,  my  good  woman,"  said  Glynn,  "your  sod 
is  not  ill  again  1 ' ' 

' '  No,  sir,  he  was  never  better, ' '  answered  the  wom- 
an, gratefully;  "but  we  can't  get  no  rest  for  thinking 
of  all  the  trouble  that  you  have  had,  and  so  my  boy 
resolved  this  morning  on  sending  you  his  favourite 
magpie." 

In  the  woman's  hand  was  a  large  wicker  basket, 
which  she  opened  at  the  conclusion  of  the  speech,  af- 
fording means  of  egress  to  an  enormous  magpie,  that 
hopped  out  into  the  room,  demure  as  a  saint  and  bold 
as  a  lord.    It  was  a  fee  to  be  proud  of ! 

The  free-will  offerings  of  the  poor  to  their  doctors 
are  sometimes  very  droll,  and  yet  more  touching.  They 
are  presented  with  such  fervour  and  simplicity,  and 
such  a  sincere  anxiety  that  they  should  be  taken  as 
an  expression  of  gratitude  for  favours  past,  not  for 
favours  to  come.  The  writer  of  these  pages  has  known 
the  humble  toilers  of  agricultural  districts  retain  for 
a  score  of  years  the  memory  of  kind  services  done  to 
them  in  sickness.  He  could  tell  of  several  who,  at  the 
anniversary  of  a  particular  day  (when  a  wife  died, 
or  child  was  saved  from  fever,  or  an  accident  crushed 
a  finger  or  lacerated  a  limb),  trudge  for  miles  ovei 
the  country  to  the  doctor's  house,  and  leave  there  a 
little  present— a  pot  of  honey,  a  basket  of  apples,  a 
dish  of  the  currants  from  the  bush  which  "the  doc- 
tor" once  praised,  and  said  was  fit  for  a  gentleman's 
garden. 

Of  eminent  physicians  Dr.  Gregory  of  Edinburgh 
was  as  remarkable  for  his  amiability  as  for  his  learn- 


210  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTOKS. 

ing.  It  was  his  custom  to  receive  from  new  pupils 
at  his  own  house  the  fees  for  the  privilege  of  attend- 
ing his  lectures.  "Whilst  thus  engaged  one  day,  he  left 
a  student  in  his  consulting-room,  and  went  into  an 
adjoining  apartment  for  a  fresh  supply  of  admission 
tickets.  In  a  mirror  the  doctor  saw  the  student  rise 
from  his  seat,  and  sweep  into  his  pocket  some  guineas 
from  a  heap  of  gold  (the  fees  of  other  students)  that 
lay  on  the  consulting-room  table.  Without  saying 
a  word  at  the  moment,  Dr.  Gregory  returned,  dated 
the  admission  ticket,  and  gave  it  to  the  thief.  He  then 
politely  attended  him  to  the  door,  and  on  the  threshold 
said  to  the  young  man,  with  deep  emotion,  "I  saw 
what  you  did  just  now.  Keep  the  money.  I  know 
what  distress  you  must  be  in.  But  for  God's  sake 
never  do  it  again— it  can  never  succeed."  The  pupil 
implored  Gregory  to  take  back  the  money,  but  the 
doctor  said,  "Your  punisliment  is  this,  you  must  keep 
it— now  you  have  taken  it."  The  reproof  had  a  salu- 
tary effect.  The  youth  turned  out  a  good  and  honest 
man. 

An  even  better  anecdote  can  be  told  of  this  good 
physician's  benevolence.  A  poor  medical  student,  ill 
of  typhus  fever,  sent  for  him.  The  summons  was  at- 
tended to,  and  the  visit  paid,  when  the  invalid  prof- 
fered the  customary  guinea  fee.  Dr.  Gregory  turned 
away,  insulted  and  angry.  "I  beg  your  pardon.  Dr. 
Gregory,"  exclaimed  the  student,  apologetically,  "I 

didn't  know  your  rule.    Dr. has  always  taken 

one."  "Oh,"  answered  Gregory,  "he  has— has  he? 
Look  you,  then,  my  young  friend;  ask  him  to  meel 
me  in  consultation,  and  then  offer  him  a  fee;  or  stay 
—offer  me  the  fee  first."    The  directions  were  duly 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  211 

acted  upon.  The  consultation  took  place,  and  the  fee 
was  offered.  "Sir,"  exclaimed  the  benevolent  doctor. 
' '  do  you  mean  to  insult  me  ?  Is  there  a  professor  who 
would  in  this  University  degrade  himself  so  far  as  to 
take  payment  from  one  of  his  brotherhood— and  a 
junior?"  The  confusion  of  the  man  on  whom  this 
reproof  was  really  conferred  can  be  imagined.  He 
had  the  decency,  ere  the  day  closed,  to  send  back  to 
the  student  all  the  fees  he  had  taken  of  him. 

Amongst  charitable  physicians  a  high  place  must 
be  assigned  to  Brocklesby,  of  whom  mention  is  made 
in  another  part  of  these  pages.  An  ardent  Whig,  he 
was  the  friend  of  enthusiastic  Tories  as  well  as  of  the 
members  of  his  own  body.  Burke  on  the  one  hand, 
and  Johnson  on  the  other,  were  amongst  his  intimate 
associates,  and  experienced  his  beneiicenee.  To  the 
latter  he  offered  a  hundred-a-year  for  life.  And  when 
the  Tory  writer  was  struggling  with  the  heavy  bur- 
den of  increasing  disease,  he  attended  him  with  af- 
fectionate solicitude,  taking  no  fee  for  his  services — 
Dr.  Heberden,  Dr.  Warren,  Dr.  Butler,  and  Mr. 
Cruikshank  the  surgeon,  displaying  a  similar  liberal- 
ity. It  was  Brocklesby  who  endeaTored  to  soothe  the 
mental  agitation  of  the  aged  scholar's  death-bed,  by 
repeating  the  passage  from  the  Roman  satirist,  in 
which  occurs  the  line:— 

"Fortem  posce  animum  et  mortis  terrore  carentem." 

Burke's  pun  on  Brocklesby 's  name  is  a  good  in- 
stance of  the  elaborate  ingenuity  with  which  the  great 
Whig  orator  adorned  his  conversation  and  his  speeches. 
Pre-eminent  amongst  the  advertising  quacks  of 
the  day  was  Dr.  Rock.  It  was  therefore  natural  that 
Brocklesby  should  express  some  surprise  at  being  ac- 


212  A   BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

costed  by  Burke  as  Dr.  Rock,  a  title  at  once  infamous 
and  ridiculous.  "Don't  be  offended.  Your  name  is 
Rock,"  said  Burke,  with  a  laugh;  "I'll  prove  it  al- 
gebraically: Brock — 'b^=Rock;  or.  Brock  less  b 
makes  Rock."  Dr.  Brocklesby,  on  the  occasion  of  giv- 
ing evidence  in  a  trial,  had  the  ill  fortune  to  offend 
the  presiding  judge,  -who,  amongst  other  prejudices 
not  uncommon  in  the  legal  profession,  cherished  a 
lively  contempt  for  medical  evidence.  "Well,  gentle- 
men of  the  jury,"  said  the  noble  lawyer  in  his  sum- 
ming up,  "what's  the  medical  testimony?  First  we 
have  a  Dr.  Rocklesby  or— Brocklesby.  What  does  he 
say?    First  of  all  he  swears— he's  a  physician." 

Abernethy  is  a  by-word  for  rudeness  and  even  bru- 
tality of  manner;  but  he  was  as  tender  and  generous 
as  a  man  ought  to  be,  as  a  man  of  great  intelligence 
usually  is.  The  stories  current  about  him  are  nearly 
all  fictions  of  the  imagination;  or,  where  they  have 
any  foundation  in  fact,  relate  to  events  that  occurred 
long  before  the  hero  to  whom  they  are  tacked  by  anec- 
dote-mongers had  appeared  on  the  stage.  He  was  ec- 
centric— but  his  eccentricities  always  took  the  direc- 
tion of  common  sense;  whereas  the  extravagances  at- 
tributed to  him  by  popular  gossip  are  frequently  those 
of  a  heartless  buffoon.  His  time  was  precious,  and 
he  rightly  considered  that  his  business  was  to  set  his 
patients  in  the  way  of  recovering  their  lost  health— 
not  to  listen  to  their  fatuous  prosings  about  their  mal- 
adies. He  was  therefore  prompt  and  decided  in  check- 
ing the  egotistic  garrulity  of  valetudinarians.  This 
candid  expression  of  his  dislike  to  unnecessary  talk 
had  one  good  result.  People  who  came  to  consult  him 
took  care  not  to  offend  him  by  bootless  prating.     A 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  213 

lady  on  one  occasioa  entered  his  consulting-room, 
and  put  before  him  an  injured  finger,  without  saying 
a  word.  In  silence  Abernethy  dressed  the  wound, 
when  instantly  and  silently  the  lady  put  the  usua) 
fee  on  the  table,  and  retired.  In  a  few  days  she  called 
again,  and  offered  the  finger  for  inspection.  "Bet- 
ter?" asked  the  surgeon.  "Better,"  answered  the 
lady,  speaking  to  him  for  the  first  time.  Not  another 
word  followed  during  the  rest  of  the  interview.  Three 
or  four  similar  visits  were  made,  at  the  last  of  which 
the  patient  held  out  her  finger  free  from  bandages  and 
perfectly  healed.  "Well?"  was  Abernethy 's  mono- 
syllabic inquiry.  "Well,"  was  the  lady's  equally  brief 
answer.  "Upon  my  soul,  madam,"  exclaimed  the  de- 
lighted surgeon,  "you  are  the  most  rational  woman  I 
ever  met  with." 

To  curb  his  tongue,  however,  out  of  respect  to 
Abernethy 's  humour,  was  an  impossibility  to  John 
Philpot  Curran.  Eight  times  Curran  (personally  un- 
known to  Abernethy)  had  called  on  the  great  sur- 
geon; and  eight  times  Abernethy  had  looked  at  the 
orator's  tongue  (telling  him,  by-the-by,  that  it  was 
the  most  unclean  and  uttei'ly  abominable  tongue  in 
the  world),  had  curtly  advised  him  to  drink  less,  and 
not  abuse  his  stomach  with  gormandizing,  had  taken 
a  guinea,  and  had  bowed  him  out  of  the  room.  On 
the  ninth  visit,  just  as  he  was  about  to  be  dismissed 
in  the  same  summary  fashion,  Curran,  with  a  flash  of 
his  dark  eye,  fixed  the  surgeon,  and  said— "Mr. 
Abernethy,  I  have  been  here  on  eight  different  days, 
and  I  have  paid  you  eight  different  guineas ;  but  you 
have  never  yet  listened  to  the  symptoms  of  my  com- 
plaint.   I  am  resolved,  sir,  not  to  leave  the  room  till 


214  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

you  satisfy  me  by  doing  so."  With  a  good-natured 
laugh,  Abernethy,  half  suspecting  that  he  had  to  deal 
with  a  madman,  fell  back  in  his  chair  and  said— "Oh ! 
very  well,  sir;  I  am  ready  to  hear  you  out.  Go  on, 
give  me  the  whole— your  birth,  parentage,  and  educa- 
tion. I  wait  your  pleasure.  Pray  be  as  minute  and 
tedious  as  you  can."  With  perfect  gravity  Curran 
began — "Sir,  my  name  is  John  Philpot  Curran.  My 
parents  were  poor,  but  I  believe  honest  people,  of  the 
province  of  Munster,  where  also  I  was  born,  at  New- 
market, in  the  county  of  Cork,  in  the  year  one  thou- 
sand seven  hundred  and  fifty.  My  father  being  em- 
ployed to  collect  the  rents  of  a  Protestant  gentleman 
of  small  fortune,  in  that  neighbourhood,  procured  my 
admission  into  one  of  the  Protestant  free-schools, 
where  I  obtained  the  first  rudiments  of  my  education. 
I  was  next  enabled  to  enter  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
in  the  humble  sphere  of  a  sizar—"  And  so  he  went 
steadily  on,  till  he  had  thrown  his  auditor  into  convul- 
sions of  laughter. 

Abernethy  was  very  careful  not  to  take  fees  from 
patients  if  he  suspected  them  to  be  in  indigent  circum- 
stances. Mr.  George  Macilwain,  in  his  instructive  and 
agreeable  "Memoirs  of  John  Abernethy,"  mentions  a 
case  where  an  old  officer  of  parsimonious  habits,  but 
not  of  impoverished  condition,  could  not  induce  Aber- 
nethy to  accept  his  fee,  and  consequently  forbore 
from  again  consulting  him.  On  another  occasion, 
when  a  half-pay  lieutenant  wished  to  pay  him  for  a 
long  and  laborious  attendance,  Abernethy  replied, 
"Wait  till  you're  a  general;  then  come  and  see  me, 
and  we'll  talk  about  fees."  To  a  gentleman  of  small 
means  who  consulted  him,  after  having  in  vain  had 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  215 

recourse  to  other  surgeons,  lie  said — "Tour  recovery 
will  be  slow.  If  you  don't  feel  much  pain,  depend 
upon  it  you  are  gradually  getting  round;  if  you  do 
feel  much  pain,  then  come  again,  hut  not  else.  I  don't 
want  your  money."  To  a  hospital  student  (of  great 
promise  and  industry,  but  in  narrow  circumstances), 
who  became  his  dresser,  he  returned  the  customary  fee 
of  sixty  guineas,  and  requested  him  to  expend  them  in 
the  purchase  of  books  and  securing  other  means  of 
improvement.  To  a  poor  widow  lady  (who  consulted 
him  about  her  child),  he,  on  saying  good-bye  in  a 
friendly  letter,  returned  all  the  fees  he  had  taken 
from  her  imder  the  impression  that  she  was  in  good 
circumstances,  and  added  £50  to  the  sum,  begging  her 
to  expend  it  in  giving  her  child  a  daily  ride  in  the 
fresh  air.  He  was  often  brusque  and  harsh,  and  more 
than  once  was  properly  reproved  for  his  hastiness  and 
want  of  consideration. 

"I  have  heard  of  your  rudeness  before  I  came,  sir," 
one  lady  said,  taking  his  prescription,  "but  I  was  not 
prepared  for  such  treatment.  What  am  I  to  do  with 
this?" 

"Anything  you  like,"  the  surgeon  roughly  an- 
swered.   "Put  it  on  the  fire  if  you  please." 

Taking  him  at  his  word,  the  lady  put  her  fee  on 
the  table,  and  the  prescription  on  the  fire ;  and  making 
a  bow,  left  the  room.  Abernethy  followed  her  into  the 
hall,  apologizing,  and  begging  her  to  take  back  the  fee 
or  let  him  write  another  prescription;  but  the  lady 
would  not  yield  her  vantage-ground. 

Of  operations  Abernethy  had  a  most  un-surgeon- 
like  horror— "like  Cheseklen  and  Hunter,  regarding 
them  as  the  reproach  of  the  profession."    "I  hope, 


216  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

sir,  it  will  not  be  long, ' '  said  a  poor  woman,  suffering 
under  the  knife.  "No,  indeed,"  earnestly  answered 
Abernethy,  "that  would  be  too  horrible."  This 
humanity,  on  a  point  on  which  surgeons  are  popu- 
larly regarded  as  being  devoid  of  feeling,  is  very  gen- 
eral in  the  profession.  William  Cooper  (Sir  Astley's 
uncle)  was,  like  Abernethy,  a  most  tender-hearted 
man.  He  was  about  to  amputate  a  man's  leg,  in  the 
hospital  theatre,  when  the  poor  fellow,  terrified  at  the 
display  of  instruments  and  apparatus,  suddenly 
jumped  off  the  table,  and  hobbled  away.  The  stu- 
dents burst  out  laughing;  and  the  surgeon,  much 
pleased  at  being  excused  from  the  performance  of  a 
painful  duty,  exclaimed,  "By  God,  I  am  glad  he's 
gone!" 

The  treatment  which  one  poor  fellow  received  from 
Abernethy  may  at  first  sight  seem  to  militate  against 
our  high  estimate  of  the  surgeon's  humanity,  and  dis- 
like of  inflicting  physical  pain.    Dr. ,  an  eminent 

physician  still  living  and  conferring  lustre  on  his  pro- 
fession,  sent  a  favourite  man-servant  with  a  brief 
note,  running— "Dear  Abernethy,  Will  you  do  me 
the  kindness  to  put  a  seton  in  this  poor  fellow's  neck? 
Yours  sincerely, ."  The  man,  who  was  accus- 
tomed and  encouraged  to  indulge  in  considerable 
freedom  of  speech  with  his  master's  friends,  not  only 
delivered  the  note  to  Abernethy,  but  added,  in  an  ex- 
planatory and  confiding  tone,  "You  see,  sir,  I  don't 
get  better,  and  as  master  thinks  I  ought  to  have  s 
seton  in  my  neck,  I  should  be  thankful  if  you'd  put  it 
in  for  me."  It  is  not  at  all  improbable  that  Aber- 
nethy resented  the  directions  of  master  and  man. 
Anyhow  he  inquired  into  the  invalid's  case,  and  then 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  217 

taking  out  his  needles  did  as  he  was  requested.  The 
operation  was  attended  with  a  little  pain,  and  the  man 
howled,  as  only  a  coward  can  howl,  under  the  tempor- 
ary  inconvenience.  "Oh!  Lor'  bless  you!  Oh,  have 
mercy  on  me!  Yarra— yarra— yarr !  Oh,  doctor- 
doctor— you'll  kill  me!"  In  another  minute  the  sur- 
geon's work  was  accomplished,  and  the  acute  pain 
having  passed  away,  the  man  recovered  his  self-pos- 
session and  impudence. 

"Oh,  well,  sir,  I  do  hope,  now  that  it's  done,  it'll  dc 
me  good.    I  do  hope  that." 

"But  it  won't  do  you  a  bit  of  good." 
"What,  sir,  no  good?"  cried  the  fellow. 
"No  more  good,"  replied  Abernethy,  "than  if  I 
had  spat  upon  it." 

"Then,  sir— why— oh,  yarr!  here's  the  pain  again 
—why  did  you  do  it?" 

"Confound  you,  man!"  answered  the  surgeon  test- 
ily. "Why  did  I  do  it?— why,  didn't  you  ask  me  to 
put  a  seton  in  your  neck?" 

Of  course  the  surgical  treatment  employed  by  Aber- 
nethy in  this  case  was  the  right  one;  but  he  was  so 
nettled  with  the  fellow's  impudence  and  unmanly 
lamentations,  that  he  eovild  not  forbear  playing  off 
upon  him  a  barbarous  jest. 

If  for  this  outbreak  of  vindictive  humour  the 
reader  is  inclined  to  call  Abernethy  a  savage,  let  his 
gift  of  £50  to  the  widow  lady,  to  pay  for  her  sick 
child 's  carriage  exercise,  be  remembered.  Apropos  of 
£50,  Dr.  Wilson  of  Bath  sent  a  present  of  that  sum  to 
an  indigent  clergyman,  against  whom  he  had  come  in 
the  course  of  practice.  The  gentleman  who  had  en- 
gaged to  convey  the  gift  to  the  unfortunate  priest 


21ii  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

said,  "Well,  then,  I'll  take  the  money  to  him  to-mor- 
row." "Oh,  my  dear  sir,"  said  the  doctor,  "take  it 
to  him  to-night.  Only  think  of  the  importance  to  a 
sick  man  of  one  good  night's  rest!" 

Side  by  side  with  stories  of  the  benevolence  of  "the 
Faculty,"  piquant  anecdotes  of  their  stinginess  might 
be  told.  This  writer  knew  formerly  a  grab-all-you- 
can-get  surgeon,  who  was  entertaining  a  few  profes- 
sional brethren  at  a  Sunday  morning's  breakfast, 
when  a  patient  was  ushered  into  the  ante-room  of  the 
surgeon's  bachelor  chambers,  and  the  surgeon  him- 
self was  called  away  to  the  visitor.  Unfortunately  he 
left  the  folding-doors  between  the  breakfast-room  and 
the  ante-room  ajar,  and  his  friends  sitting  in  the  for- 
mer apartment  overheard  the  following  conversation : 

"Well,  my  friend,  what's  the  matter?"— the  sur- 
geon's voice. 

The  visitor's  voice— "Plaze,  yer  honner,  I'm  a  pore 
Hirish  labourer,  but  I  can  spill  a  bit,  and  I  read  o' 
yer  honner 's  moighty  foine  cure  in  the  midical  jarnal 
— the  Lancet.  And  I've  walked  up  twilve  miles  to 
have  yer  honner  cure  me.    My  complaint  is " 

Surgeon's  voice,  contemptuously— "Oh,  my  good 
man,  you've  made  a  mistake.  You'd  better  go  to 
the  druggist's  shop  nearest  your  home,  and  he'll  do 
for  you  all  you  want.  You  couldn't  pay  me  as  I 
require  to  be  paid." 

Visitor's  voice,  proudly  and  triumphantly— "Och, 
an'  little  ye  know  an  Irish  gintleman,  dochter,  if  ye 
think  he'd  be  beholden  to  the  best  of  you  for  a  feavor. 
Here's  a  bit  o'  gould — nocht  liss  nor  a  tin  shillin' 
piece,  but  I've  saved  it  up  for  ye,  and  ye '11  heve  the 
whole,  tho'  its  every  blissed  farthing  I  hev." 


A    BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  219 

The  surgeon's  voice  altered.  The  case  was  gone 
into.  The  prescription  was  written.  The  poor  Irish 
drudge  rose  to  go,  when  the  surgeon,  with  that  deli- 
cate quantity  of  conscience  that  rogues  always  have 
to  make  themselves  comfortable  upon,  said,  "Now, 
you  say  you  have  no  more  money,  my  friend.  Well, 
the  druggist  will  charge  you  eighteenpence  for  the 
medicine  I  have  ordered  there.  So  there's  eighteen- 
pence for  you  out  of  your  half-sovereign." 

"We  may  add  that  this  surgeon  was  then,  at  a  mod- 
erate computation,  making  three  thousand  a  year. 
We  have  heard  of  an  Old  Bailey  barrister  boasting 
how  he  wrung  the  shillings  (to  convert  the  sovereigns 
already  paid  \vith  his  brief  into  guineas)  from  the 
grimed  hands  of  a  prisoner  actually  standing  in  the 
dock  for  trial,  ere  he  would  engage  to  defend  him. 
But  compared  with  this  surgeon  the  man  of  the  long 
robe  was  a  disinterested  friend  of  the  oppressed. 

A  better  story  yet  of  a  surgeon  who  seized  on  his 

fee  like  a  hawk.     A  clergyman  of shire,  fell  from 

a  branch  of  a  high  pear-tree  to  the  grass-plot  of  the 
little  garden  that  surrounded  his  vicarage-house,  and 
sustained,  besides  being  stunned,  a  compound  fracture 
of  the  right  arm.  His  wife,  a  young  and  lovely  crea- 
ture, of  a  noble  but  poor  family,  to  whom  he  had  been 
married  only  three  or  four  years,  was  terribly 
alarmed,  and  without  regulating  her  conduct  by  con- 
siderations of  her  pecuniary  means,  dispatched  a  tele- 
graphic message  to  an  eminent  London  surgeon.  In 
the  course  of  three  or  four  hours  the  surgeon  made 
his  appearance,  and  set  the  broken  limb. 

"And  what,  sir,"  the  young  wife  timidly  asked  of 


220  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

the  surgeon,  when  he  had  come  down-stairs  into  her 
little  drawing-room,  "is  your  fee?" 

"Oh,  let's  see — distance  from  town,  hundred  miles. 
Yes.    Then  my  fee  is  a  hundred  guineas!" 

Turning  deadly  pale  with  fright  (for  the  sum  was 
ten  times  the  highest  amount  the  poor  girl  had 
thought  of  as  a  likely  fee)  she  rose,  and  left  the 
room,  saying,  ' '  Will  you  he  kind  enough  to  wait  for  a 
few  minutes?" 

Luckily  her  brother  (like  her  husband,  a  clergy- 
man, with  very  moderate  preferment)  was  in  the 
house,  and  he  soon  made  his  appearance  in  the  draw- 
ing-room. "Sir,"  said  he,  addressing  the  operator, 
"my  sister  has  just  now  been  telling  me  the  embar- 
rassment she  is  in,  and  I  think  it  best  to  repeat  her 
story  frankly.  She  is  quite  inexperienced  in  money 
matters,  and  sent  for  you  without  ever  asking  what 
the  ordinary  fee  to  so  distinguished  a  surgeon  as  your- 
self, for  coming  so  far  from  London,  might  be.  "Well, 
sir,  it  is  right  you  should  know  her  circumstances. 
My  brother-in-law  has  no  property  but  his  small  liv- 
ing, which  does  not  yield  him  more  than  £400  per 
annum,  and  he  has  already  two  children.  My  sister 
has  no  private  fortune  whatever,  at  present,  and  all 
she  has  in  prospect  is  the  reversion  of  a  trifling  sum— 
at  a  distant  period.  Poverty  is  the  only  stigma  that 
time  has  fixed  upon  my  family.  Now,  sir,  under  the 
circumstances,  if  professional  etiquette  would  allow 
of  your  reducing  your  fee  to  the  straitened  finances 
of  my  sister,  it  really  would— would  be—" 

"Oh,  my  dear  sir,"  returned  the  surgeon,  in  a  rich, 
unctuous  voice  of  benevolence,  "pray  don't  think  I'm 
a  shark.     I  am  really  deeply  concerned  for  your  poor 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  221 

sister.  As  for  my  demand  of  a  hundred  guineas, 
since  it  would  be  beyond  her  means  to  satisfy  it,  why, 
my  dear  sir,  I  shall  be  only  too  delighted  to  be  allowed 
—  to  take  a  hundred  pounds!" 

The  fee-loving  propensities  of  doctors  are  well  il- 
lustrated by  the  admirable  touches  of  Froissart's 
notice  of  Guyllyam  of  Harseley,  who  was  appointed 
physician  to  Charles  the  Sixth,  King  of  France,  dur- 
ing his  derangement.  The  writer 's  attention  was  first 
called  to  Friossart's  sketch  of  the  reno\\Tied  mad- 
doctor  by  his  friend  Mr.  Edgar— a  gentleman  whose 
valuable  contributions  to  historical  literature  have 
endeared  his  name  to  both  young  and  old.  Of  the 
measures  adopted  by  Guyllyam  for  the  king's  cure 
the  readers  of  Froissart  are  not  particularly  in- 
formed; but  it  would  appear,  from  the  physician's 
parting  address  to  the  "dukes  of  Orlyance,  Berrey, 
Burgoyne,  and  Burbone, ' '  that  his  system  was,  in  its 
enlightened  humanity,  not  far  behind  that  adopted  at 
the  present  day  by  Dr.  ConoUy  and  Dr.  Forbes 
Winslow.  But,  however  this  may  be,  Guyllyam 's 
labours  must  be  regarded  as  not  less  consonant  with 
sound  nosological  views  than  those  of  the  afflicted 
monarch's  courtiers,  until  it  can  be  shown  that  his 
treatment  was  worse  than  leaving  Nature  to  herself. 
"They,"  says  Froissart,  "that  wei'e  about  the  kynge 
sente  the  kynge 's  oif rynge  to  a  town  called  Aresneche, 
in  the  countie  of  Heynaulte,  between  Cambrey  and 
Valancennes,  in  the  whiche  towne  there  was  a  churche 
parteyning  to  an  Abbey  of  Saynt  Waste  in  Arrasce 
wherein  there  lyeth  a  saynte,  called  Saynt  Acquayre, 
of  whom  there  is  a  shrine  of  sylver,  which  pylgrimage 
is  sought  farre  and  nere  for  the  malady  of  the  fran- 


222  A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS 

sey;  thyder  was  sent  a  man  of  waxc,  representynge 
the  Frenche  Kynge,  and  was  humbly  offred  to  the 
Saynt,  that  he  might  be  meane  to  God,  to  asswage 
the  kynge 's  malady,  and  to  sende  him  helthe.  In 
lykewise  the  kynge 's  offrynge  was  sent  to  Saynt  Her- 
myer  in  Romayes,  which  saynt  had  meryte  to  heal  the 
fransey.  And  in  lykewise  offrynges  were  sent  into 
other  places  for  ye  same  en  tent." 

The  conclusion  of  Guyllyam's  attendance  is  thus 
described:— "Trewe  it  is  this  sycknesse  that  the  kyng 
took  in  the  voyage  towards  Bretagne  greatly  abated 
the  ioye  of  the  realme  of  France,  and  good  cause  why, 
for  when  the  heed  is  sicke  the  body  canne  have  no 
ioye.  No  man  durste  openly  speke  thereof,  but  kepte 
it  privy  as  moehe  as  might  be,  and  it  was  couertly 
kept  fro  the  queene,  for  tyll  she  was  delyuered  and 
churched  she  knewe  nothynge  thereof,  which  tyme 
she  had  a  doughter.  The  physician,  myster  Guyll- 
yam,  who  had  the  chefe  charge  of  healynge  of  the 
kynge,  was  styll  aboute  hym,  and  was  ryght  dyligent 
and  well  acquyted  hymselfe,  whereby  he  gate  bothe 
honour  and  profyte;  for  lytell  and  l}1;ell  he  brought 
the  kynge  in  good  estate,  and  toke  away  the  feuer  and 
the  heate,  and  made  hym  to  haue  taste  and  appetyte 
to  eate  and  drinke,  slepe  and  rest,  and  knowledge  of 
every  thynge;  howebeit,  he  was  very  feble,  and  lytell 
and  lytell  he  made  the  kynge  to  ryde  a  huntynge  and 
on  hawkynge;  and  whanne  tydynges  was  knowen 
through  France  howe  the  kynge  was  well  mended,  and 
had  his  memory  again,  every  man  was  ioyfull  and 
thanked  God.  The  kynge  thus  beyng  at  Crayell,  de- 
syred  to  se  the  quene  his  wyfe  and  the  dolphyn  his 
Sonne;  so  the  quene  came  thyder  to  hym,  and  the 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  223 

chylde  was  brought  thyder,  the  kynge  made  them 
good  chere,  and  so  lytell  and  lytell,  through  the  helpe 
of  God,  the  kynge  reeouered  his  helthe.  And  when 
mayster  Guyllyam  sawe  the  kynge  in  so  good  case  he 
was  ryght  ioyfull,  as  reasone  was,  for  he  hade  done 
a  fayre  cure,  and  so  delyuered  him  to  the  dukes  of 
Orlyance,  Berrey,  Burgoyne,  and  Burbone,  and  sayd : 
'My  lordes,  thanked  be  God,  the  kynge  is  nowe  in 
good  state  and  helth,  so  I  delyuer  him,  but  beware 
lette  no  mane  dysplease  hym,  for  as  yet  his  spyrytes 
be  no  fully  ferme  nor  stable,  but  lytell  and  lytell  he 
shall  waxe  stronge;  reasonable  dysporte,  rest,  and 
myrthe  shall  be  moste  profytable  for  hym;  and 
trouble  hym  as  lytell  as  may  be  with  any  counsayles, 
for  he  hath  been  sharpely  handeled  with  a  bote 
malady.'  Than  it  was  consydred  to  retaygne  this 
mayster  Guyllyam,  and  to  gyve  hym  that  he  shulde 
be  content  with  all,  whiche  is  the  ende  that  all  phy- 
sicians requyre,  to  haue  gyftes  and  rcwardes;  he  was 
desyred  to  abyde  styll  about  the  kynge,  but  he  ex- 
cused hymselfe,  and  sayd  howe  he  was  an  olde  im- 
potent man,  and  coulde  note  endure  the  maner  of 
courts,  wherfore  he  desyred  to  returne  into  his  owne 
countrey.  Whan  the  counsayle  sawe  he  wolde  none 
otherwyse  do,  they  gaue  him  leaue,  and  at  his  depart- 
ing gave  him  a  thousand  crownes,  and  retayned  hym 
in  wages  with  four  horses  whansover  he  wolde  resorte 
to  the  courte;  howbeit,  I  beleve  he  never  came  there 
after,  for  whan  he  retournd  to  the  cytie  of  Laon, 
there  he  contynued  and  dyed  a  ryche  man :  he  left 
behynde  him  a  xxx  thousand  frankes.  All  his  dayes 
he  was  one  of  the  greatest  nygardes  that  ever  was: 
all  his  pleasure  was  to  get  good  and  to  spende  noth- 


224  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

ynge,  for  in  his  bowse  he  neuer  spente  past  two  souses 
of  Parys  in  a  day,  but  wolde  eate  and  drinke  in  other 
mennes  bowses,  where  as  be  myght  get  it.  With  this 
rodde  lyghtly  all  pliysicyons  are  heaten."* 

The  humane  advice  given  by  Guyllym  countenances 
the  tradition  that  cards  were  invented  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  his  royal  patient. 

*  Froissart's  Chronicles,  translated  by  John  Bouchier,  Lord 
Bemers. 


CHAPTER  XII. 


BLEEDING. 


Fashion,  capricious  everywhere,  is  especially  so  in 
surgery  and  medicine.  Smoking  we  are  now  taught 
to  regard  as  a  pernicious  practice,  to  be  abhorred 
as  James  the  First  abhorred  it.  Yet  Dr.  Archer,  and 
Dr.  Everard  in  his  "Panacea,  or  a  Universal  Medi- 
cine, being  a  discovery  of  the  wonderful  virtues  of 
Tobacco"  (1659),  warmly  defended  the  habit,  and  for 
long  it  was  held  by  the  highest  authorities  to  be  an 
efficacious  preservative  against  disease.  What  would 
schoolboys  now  say  to  being  flogged  for  not  smoking  ? 
Yet  Thomas  Hearne,  in  his  diary  (1720-21)  writes— 
"Jan.  21,  I  have  been  told  that  in  the  last  great 
plague  in  London  none  that  kept  tobacconists'  shops 
had  the  plague.  It  is  certain  that  smoking  was  looked 
upon  as  a  most  excellent  preservative.  In  so  much, 
that  even  children  were  obliged  to  smoak.  And  I  re- 
member that  I  heard  formerly  Tom  Rogers,  who  was 
yeoman  beadle,  say,  that  when  he  was  that  year,  when 
the  plague  raged,  a  school-boy  at  Eton,  all  the  boys  of 
that  school  were  obliged  to  smoak  in  the  school  every 
morning,  and  that  he  was  never  whipped  so  much  in 
his  life  as  he  was  one  morning  for  not  smoaking. ' ' 

4-15 


226  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

Blood-letting,  so  long  a  popular  remedy  with  physi- 
cians, has,  like  tobaeeo-smoking  for  medicinal  pur- 
poses, fallen  into  disuse  and  contempt.  From  Hippo- 
crates to  Paracelsus,  who,  with  characteristic  daring, 
raised  some  objections  to  the  practice  of  venesection, 
doctors  were  in  the  habit  of  drawing  disease  from  the 
body  as  vintners  extract  claret  from  a  cask,  in  a  ruddy 
stream.  In  the  feudal  ages  bleeding  was  in  high 
favour.  Most  of  the  abbeys  had  a  "flebotomaria"  or 
"bleeding-house,"  in  which  the  sacred  inmates  under- 
went bleedings  (or  "minutions"  as  they  were 
termed)  at  stated  periods  of  the  year,  to  the  strains  of 
psalmody.  The  brethren  of  the  order  of  St.  Victor 
underwent  five  munitions  annually— in  September, 
before  Advent,  before  Lent,  after  Easter,  and  at  Pen- 
tecost. 

There  is  a  good  general  view  of  the  superstitions 
and  customs  connected  with  venesection,  in  "  The  Sal- 
erne  Schoole,"  a  poem  of  which  mention  continually 
occurs  in  the  writings  of  our  old  physicians.  The 
poem  commences  with  the  following  stanza:— 

"The  'Salerne  Schoole'  doth  by  these  lines  impart 
All  health  to  England's  king,  and  doth  advise 
From  care  his  head  to  keepe,  from  wrath  his  hart. 
Drink  not  much  wine,  sup  light  and  soon  arise. 
When  meat  is  gone  long  sitting  breedeth  smart; 
And  afternoon  still  waking  keep  your  eies. 
«  *  *  * 

Use  three  physicians  still — first  Doctor  Quiet, 
Next  Doctor  Merriman  and  Doctor  Dyet. 

"Of  bleeding  many  profits  grow  and  great 
The  spirits  and  sences  are  renew'd  thereby, 

Thogh  these  mend  slowly  by  the  strength  of  meate, 
But  these  with  wine  restor'd  are  by-and-by; 

By  bleeding  to  the  marrow  commeth  heate, 

It  maketh  cleane  your  braine,  releeves  your  eie. 

It  mends  your  appetite,  restoreth  sleepe. 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  227 

Correcting  humors  that  do  waking  keep; 

All  inward  parts  and  sences  also  clearing, 

It  mends  the  voice,  touch,  smell,  and  taste,  and  hearing. 

"Three  special  months,  September,  Aprill,  May, 
There  are  in  which  'tis  good  to  ope  a  vein — 

In  these  three  months  the  moon  beares  greatest  sway, 
Then  old  or  young,  that  store  of  blood  containe. 

May  bleed  now,  though  some  elder  wizards  say. 
Some  dales  are  ill  in  these,  I  hold  it  vaine; 

September,  Aprill,  May  have  daies  apeece. 

That  bleeding  do  forbid  and  eating  geese, 

And  those  are  they,  forsooth,  of  May  the  first, 

Of  t'other  two,  the  last  of  each  are  worst. 

"But  yet  those  daies  I  graunt,  and  all  the  rest, 

Haue  in  some  cases  just  impediment. 
As  first,  if  nature  be  with  cold  opprest. 

Or  if  the  Region,  He,  or  Continent, 
Do  scorch  or  freez,  if  stomach  meat  detest. 

If  Baths  you  lately  did  frequent, 
Nor  old,  nor  young,  nor  drinkers  great  are  fit. 
Nor  in  long  sickness,  nor  in  raging  fit, 
Or  in  this  case,  if  you  will  venture  bleeding. 
The  quantity  must  then  be  most  exceeding. 

"When  you  to  bleed  intend,  you  must  prepare 

Some  needful  things  both  after  and  before: 
Warm  water  and  sweet  oyle  both  needfull  are, 

And  wine  the  fainting  spirits  to  restore; 
Fine  binding  cloths  of  linnen,  and  beware 

That  all  the  morning  you  do  sleepe  no  more; 
Some  gentle  motion  helpeth  after  bleeding, 
And  on  light  meals  a  spare  and  temperate  feeding 
To  bleed  doth  cheare  the  pensive,  and  remove 
The  raging  furies  bred  by  burning  love. 

"Make  your  incision  large  and  not  too  deep, 
That  blood  have  speedy  yssue  with  the  fume; 
So  that  from  sinnews  you  all  hurt  do  keep. 

Nor  may  you  (as  I  toucht  before)  presume 
In  six  ensuing  houres  at  all  to  sleep, 

Lest  some  slight  bruise  in  sleepe  cause  an  apostume; 
Eat  not  of  milke,  or  aught  of  milke  compounded, 
Nor  let  your  brain  with  much  drinke  be  confounded; 
Eat  no  cold  meats,  for  such  the  strength  impayre, 
And  shun  all  misty  and  unwholesome  ayre. 

"Besides  the  former  rules  for  such  as  pleases 


228  A   BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

Of  letting  bloud  to  take  more  observation; 

*  *  *  * 

To  old,  to  young,  both  letting  blood  displeases. 

By  yeares  and  sickness  make  your  computation. 
First  in  the  spring  for  quantity  you  shall 
Of  bloud  take  twice  as  much  as  in  the  fall; 
In  spring  and  summer  let  the  right  arme  bloud, 
The  fall  and  winter  for  the  left  are  good." 

Wadd  mentions  an  old  surgical  writer  who  dividea 
his  chapter  on  bleeding  under  such  heads  as  the  fol- 
lowing:—!. What  is  to  limit  bleeding?  2.  Qualities 
of  an  able  phlebotomist ;  3.  Of  the  choice  of  instru- 
ments; 4.  Of  the  band  and  bolster;  5.  Of  porringers; 
6.  Circumstances  to  be  considered  at  the  bleeding  of  a 
Prince. 

Simon  Harward's  "Phlebotomy,  or  Treatise  of  Let- 
ting of  Bloud;  fitly  serving,  as  well  for  an  advertise- 
ment and  remembrance  to  all  well-minded  chirurg- 
ians,  as  well  also  to  give  a  caveat  generally  to  all  men 
to  beware  of  the  manifold  dangers  which  may  ensue 
upon  rash  and  unadvised  letting  of  bloud,"  published 
in  the  year  IGOl,  contains  much  interesting  matter  on 
the  subject  of  which  it  treats.  But  a  yet  more  amus- 
ing work  is  one  that  Nicholas  Gyer  wrote  and  pub- 
lished in  1592,  under  the  following  title:  — 

"The  English  Phlebotomy;  or,  Method  and  Way  of 
Healing  by  Letting  of  Bloud." 

On  the  title-page  is  a  motto  taken  from  the  book  of 
Proverbs— "The  horse- leach  hath  two  daughters, 
which  erye,  'give,  give.'  " 

The  work  affords  some  valuable  insight  into  the 
social  status  of  the  profession  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. 

In  his  dedicatory  letter  to  Master  Reginald  Scot, 
Esquire,  the  author  says  that  phlebotomy  "is  greatly. 


•lOUl      1)()C-1<1K 


Hig  bloud  to  lake  tn 

*  • 


•  fall  and.  winter  tor  the  left  ar 


i.Aving::— 1.  "W'  imit  bleeding 

of 

mc, 

G.  Circ. 

Prince, 

Simon  Ha:  '''<my,  or,  Trenti^.    .f  ^vt- 

ting  of  Bloud;  ell  for  ai 

menf  and   rc-nii'u.l.  •  - 'I-immiu.;.,; 

m:^.^S \'^V^P^^^  ^^''  T'^^  M^PI€A1.   SociSTr 
to  beware  of  th.      :.s<3^  London 
upon  r. 

in  the  ; ..  .  -      -, 
the  subject  of  whici 
ing  work  is  our 
lished  in  1592,  i.„  .. 

"TheEneUshPhl.i  y  of 

II  r 

U,^  ...^  .....  1..^..  f^'•  bo"\  of 

Proverbs— "The   he  ,       ers, 

.,:■.■   ,.w.  I.  ...f-.  ,..,;,,i.t  into  the 

■ocjal  gtatuB  of  the  ith  cen- 

!3  dedicf  ^  ^'inald  Scot, 

:,  the  an  "ia  greatly 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  229 

abused  by  vagabund  horse-leacbes  and  travailing 
tinkers,  who  find  work  almost  in  every  village  through 
whom  it  comes  (having  in  truth  neither  knowledge, 
nor  witte,  nor  honesty),  the  sober  practitioner  and 
cunning  chirurgian  liveth  basely,  is  despised,  and  ac- 
counted a  very  abject  amongst  the  vulgar  sort."  Of 
the  medical  skill  of  Sir  Thomas  Eliot,  and  Drs.  Bul- 
leyn.  Turner,  Penie,  and  Coldwel,  the  author  speaks 
in  terms  of  warm  eulogy,  but  as  for  the  tinkers  afore- 
mentioned, he  would  regard  them  as  murderers,  and 
"truss  them  up  at  Tyborne." 

Gyer,  who  indulges  in  continual  reference  to  the 
"Schola  Salerni, "  makes  the  following  contribution 
to  the  printed  metrical  literature  on  Venesection:— 

"Certaine  very  old  English  verses,  concerning  the  veines  and 
letting  of  bloud,  taken  out  of  a  very  auncient  paper  book 
of  Phisicke  notes: — 
"Ye  maisters  that  usen  bloud-letting, 
And  therewith  getten  your  living; 
Here  may  you  learn  wisdome  good, 
In  what  place  ye  shall  let  bloud. 
For  man,  in  woman,  or  in  child, 
For  evils  that  he  wood  and  wild. 
There  beene  veynes  thirty-and-two, 
For  wile  is  many,  that  must  he  undo. 
Sixteene  in  the  head  full  right, 
And   si.xteene  beneath  I  you  plight. 
In  what  place  they  shall  be  found, 
I  shall  you  tell  in  what  stound. 
Beside  the  eares  there  beene  two. 
That  on  a  child  mote  beene  undoe; 
To  keep  his  head  from  evil  turning 
And  from  the  scale  withouten  letting. 
And  two  at  the  temples  must  bleede, 
For  stopping  and  aking  I  reedc; 
And  one  is  in  the  mid  forehead. 
For  Lepry  or  for  sawcefleme  that  mote  bleede. 
Above  the  nose  forsooth  is  one, 
That  for  the  frensie  mote  be  undone. 
Also  when  the  eien  been  sore. 
For  the  red  gowt  evermore. 
And  two  other  be  at  the  eien  end. 


230  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

If  thy  bleeden  them  to  amend. 

And  the  arch  that  comes  thorow  smoking, 

I  you  tell  withouten  leasing. 

And  at  the  whole  of  the  throat,  there  beene  two. 

That  Lepry  and  straight  breath  will  undoo. 

In  the  lips  foure  there  beene. 

Able  to  bleede  I  tell  it  be  deene. 

Two  beneath,  and  above  also 

I  tell  thee  there  beene  two. 

For  soreness  of  the  mouth  to  bleede, 

When  it  is  flawne  as  I  thee  reede. 

And  two  in  the  tongue  withouten  lie, 

Mote  bleede  for  the  quinancie. 

And  when  the  tongue  is  aught  aking, 

For  all  manner  of  swelling. 

Now  have  I  tolde  of  certaine, 

That  longer  for  the  head  I  weene, 

And  of  as  many  I  will  say, 

That  else  where  there  beene  in  fay. 

In  every  arme  there  beene  fife. 

Full  good  to  blede  for  man  and  wife, 

Cephalica  is  one  I  wis. 

The  head  veyne  he  cleaped  is. 

The  body  above  and  the  head; 

He  cleanseth  for  evil  and  qued. 

In  the  bought  of  the  arme  also. 

An  order  there  must  he  undoo ; 

Basilica  his  name  is. 

Lowest  he  sitteth  there  y  wis ; 

Forsooth  he  cleanseth  the  liver  aright. 

And  all  other  members  beneath  I  twight. 

The  middle  is  between  the  two, 

Corall  he  is  clipped  also 

That  veine  cleanseth  withouten  doubt; 

Above  and  beneath,  within  and  without. 

For  Basilica  that  I  of  told, 

One  braunched  veine  ety  up  full  bold. 

To  the  thomb  goeth  that  one  braunch; 

The  cardiacle  he  wil  staunch, 

That  there  braunch  full  right  goeth, 

To  the  little  finger  withouten  oth; 

Saluatell  is  his  name. 

He   is  a  veine  of  noble  fame; 

There  is  no  veine  that  cleanseth  so  clene. 

The  stopping  of  the  liver  and  splene. 

Above  the  knuckles  of  the  feet, 

With  two  veines  may  thou  meet. 

Within  sitteth  Domestica, 

And  without  Saluatica. 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  231 


All  the  veines  thee  have  I  told, 

That  cleanseth  man  both  yong  and  old. 

If  thou  use  them  at  thy  need, 

These  foresaid  evils  they  dare  not  dread; 

So  that  our  Lord  be  them  helping, 

That  all  hath  in  his  governing. 

So  mote  it  be,  so  say  all  wee, 

Amen,  amen,  for  charitee." 

To  bleed  on  May-day  is  still  the  custom  with  ig- 
norant people  in  a  few  remote  districts.  The  system 
of  vernal  minutions  probably  arose  from  that  ten- 
dency in  most  men  to  repeat  an  act  (simply  because 
they  have  done  it  once)  until  it  has  become  a  habit, 
and  then  superstitiously  to  persevere  in  the  habity 
simply  because  it  is  a  habit.  How  many  aged  people 
read  certain  antiquated  journals,  as  they  wear  ex- 
ploded garments,  for  no  other  reason  than  that  they 
read  the  same  sort  of  literature,  and  wore  the  same 
sort  of  habiliments,  when  young.  To  miss  for  once 
the  performance  of  a  periodically  recurring  duty, 
and  so  to  break  a  series  of  achievements,  would  worry 
many  persons, as  the  intermitted  post  caused  Dr.  John- 
son discomfort  till  he  had  returned  and  touched  it. 
As  early  as  the  sixteenth  century,  we  have  Gyer  com- 
bating the  folly  of  people  having  recourse  to  periodic 
venesections.  "There  cometh  to  my  minde,"  he  says, 
"a  common  opinion  among  the  ignorant  people,  which 
do  certainly  beleeve  that,  if  any  person  be  let  bloud 
one  yere,  he  must  be  let  bloud  every  yere,  or  else  he 
is  (I  cannot  tell,  nor  they  neither)  in  how  great  dan- 
ger. Which  fonde  opinion  of  theirs,  whereof  soever 
the  same  sprong  first,  it  is  no  more  like  to  be  true, 
than  if  I  should  say:  when  a  man  hath  received  a 
great  wound  by  chaunce  in  any  part  of  his  body, 


232  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

whereby  he  loseth  much  bloud ;  yet  after  it  is  healed, 
he  must  needs  have  the  like  wounde  againe  there  the 
next  yeare,  to  avoid  as  much  bloud,  or  els  he  is  in 
daunger  of  great  sickness,  yea,  and  also  in  hazard  to 
lose  his  life." 

The  practitioners  of  phlebotomy,  and  the  fees  paid 
for  the  operation,  have  differed  widely.  In  the  mid- 
dle of  the  last  century  a  woman  used  the  lancet  with 
great  benefit  to  her  own  pocket,  if  not  to  her  pa- 
tients, in  Marshland,  in  the  county  of  Norfolk.  What 
her  charge  was  is  unkno^\Ti,  probably,  however,  only 
a  few  pence.  A  distinguished  personage  of  the  same 
period  (Lord  Radnor)  had  a  great  fondness  for  let- 
ting the  blood  (at  the  point  of  an  amicable  lancet— 
not  a  hostile  sword)  of  his  friends.  But  his  Lord- 
ship, far  from  accepting  a  fee,  was  willing  to  remun- 
erate those  who  had  the  courage  to  submit  to  his  sur- 
gical care.  Lord  Chesterfield,  wanting  an  additional 
vote  for  a  coming  division  in  the  House  of  Peers, 
called  on  Lord  Radnor,  and,  after  a  little  introduc- 
tory conversation,  complained  of  a  distressing  head- 
ache. 

"You  ought  to  lose  blood  then,"  said  Lord  Rad- 
nor. 

"Gad— do  you  indeed  think  so?  Then,  my  dear 
lord,  do  add  to  the  service  of  your  advice  by  perform- 
ing the  operation.  I  know  you  are  a  most  skilful  sur- 
geon." 

Delighted  at  the  compliment,  Lord  Radnor  in  a 
trice  pulled  out  his  lancet-case,  and  opened  a  vein  in 
his  friend's  arm. 

"By-the-by,"  asked  the  patient,  as  his  arm  was 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  233 

being  adroitly  bound  up,  "do  you  go  down  to  the 
House  to-day?" 

"I  had  not  intended  going,"  answered  the  noble 
operator,  "not  being  suflBciently  informed  on  the 
question  which  is  to  be  debated;  but  you,  that  have 
considered  it,  which  side  will  you  vote  on?" 

In  reply,  Lord  Chesterfield  unfolded  his  view  of 
the  ease;  and  Lord  Radnor  was  so  delighted  with 
the  reasoning  of  the  man  (who  held  his  surgical 
powers  in  such  high  estimation),  that  he  forthwith 
promised  to  support  the  wily  earl's  side  in  the  di- 
vision. 

"I  have  shed  my  blood  for  the  good  of  my  coun- 
try," said  Lord  Chesterfield  that  evening  to  a  party 
of  friends,  who,  on  hearing  the  story,  were  convulsed 
with  laughter. 

Steele  tells  of  a  phlebotomist  who  advertised,  for 
the  good  of  mankind,  to  bleed  at  "threepence  per 
head."  Trade  competition  has,  however,  induced 
practitioners  to  perform  the  operation  even  without 
"the  threepence."  In  the  Stamford  Mercury  for 
March  28,  1716,  the  following  announcement  was 
made:— "Whereas  the  majority  of  apothecaries  in 
Boston  have  agreed  to  pull  down  the  price  of  bleed- 
ing to  sixpence,  let  these  certifie  that  Mr  Clarke, 
apothecary,  will  bleed  anybody  at  his  shop  gratis." 

The  readers  of  Smollett  may  remember  in  one  of 
his  novels  the  story  of  a  gentleman,  who,  falling 
down  in  his  club  in  an  apoplectic  fit,  was  immediate- 
ly made  the  subject  of  a  bet  between  two  friendly 
bystanders.  The  odds  were  given  and  accepted 
against  the  sick  man's  recovery,  and  the  wager  was 
duly  registered,  when  a  suggestion  was  made  by  a 


234  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

more  humane  spectator  that  a  surgeon  ought  to  he 
sent  for.  "Stay,"  exclaimed  the  good  fellow  inter- 
ested in  having  a  fatal  result  to  the  attack,  "if  he  is 
let  hlood,  or  interfered  with  in  any  way,  the  bet 
doesn't  hold  good."  This  humorous  anecdote  may  be 
found  related  as  an  actual  occurrence  in  Horace  Wal- 
pole's  works.  It  was  doubtless  one  of  the  "good 
stories"  current  in  society,  and  was  so  completely 
public  property,  that  the  novelist  deemed  himself 
entitled  to  use  it  as  he  liked.  In  certain  recent  books 
of  "ana"  the  incident  is  fixed  on  Sheridan  and  the 
Prince  Regent,  who  are  represented  as  the  parties  to 
the  bet. 

Elsewhere  mention  has  been  made  of  a  thousand 
pounds  ordered  to  be  paid  Sir  Edmund  King  for 
promptly  bleeding  Charles  the  Second.  A  nobler  fee 
was  given  by  a  French  lady  to  a  surgeon,  who  used 
his  lancet  so  clumsily  that  he  cut  an  artery  instead 
of  a  vein,  in  consequence  of  which  the  lady  died. 
On  her  death-bed  she,  with  charming  humanity  and 
irony,  made  a  will,  bequeathing  the  operator  a  life- 
annuity  of  eight  hundred  livres,  on  condition  "that 
he  never  again  bled  anybody  so  long  as  he  lived." 
In  the  Journal  Encylopedique  of  Jan.  15,  1773,  a 
somewhat  similar  story  is  told  of  a  Polish  princess, 
who  lost  her  life  in  the  same  way.  In  her  will,  made 
in  extremis,  there  was  the  following  clause:— "Con- 
vinced of  the  injury  that  my  unfortunate  accident 
will  occasion  to  the  unhappy  surgeon  who  is  the  cause 
of  my  death,  I  bequeath  to  him  a  life  annuity  of 
two  hundred  ducats,  secured  by  my  estate,  and  for- 
give his  mistake  from  my  heart :    I  wish  this  may  in- 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  235 

demnify  him  for  the  discredit  which  my  sorrowful 
catastrophe  will  bring  upon  him." 

A  famous  French  Marechal  reproved  the  clumsi- 
ness of  a  phlebotomist  in  a  less  gratifying  manner. 
Drawing  himself  away  from  the  bungling  operator, 
just  as  the  incision  was  about  to  be  made,  he  displayed 
an  unwillingness  to  put  himself  further  in  the  power 
of  a  practitioner,  who,  in  affixing  the  fillet,  had  given 
him  a  blow  with  the  elbow  in  the  face. 

My  Lord, ' '  said  the  surgeon,  ' '  it  seems  that  you 
are  afraid  of  the  bleeding. ' ' 

"No,"  returned  the  Marechal,  "not  of  the  bleed- 
ing—but the  bleeder." 

Monsieur,  brother  of  Louis  XIV.,  had  an  insupera- 
ble aversion  to  the  operation,  however  dexterous  might 
be  the  operator.  At  Marly,  while  at  table  with  the 
ICing,  he  was  visited  with  such  ominous  symptoms, 
that  Fochon,  the  first  physician  of  the  court,  said— 
"You  are  threatened  with  apoplexy,  and  you  cannot 
be  too  soon  blooded." 

But  the  advice  was  not  acted  on,  though  the  King 
entreated  that  it  might  be  complied  with. 

"You  will  find,"  said  Louis,  "what  your  obstinacy 
will  cost  you.  We  shall  be  awoke  some  of  these  nights 
to  be  told  that  you  are  dead." 

The  royal  prediction,  though  not  fulfilled  to  the 
letter,  soon  proved  substantially  true.  After  a  gay 
supper  at  St.  Cloud,  Monsieur,  just  as  he  was  about 
to  retire  to  bed,  quitted  the  world.  He  was  asking 
M.  de  Ventadour  for  a  glass  of  liqueur  sent  him  by  the 
Duke  of  Savoy,  when  he  dropped  down  dead.  Any- 
how Monsieur  went  out  of  this  life  thinking  of 
something  nice.    The  Marquis  of  Hertford,  with  all 


236  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

his  deliberation,  could  not  do  more. 

The  excess  to  which  the  practice  of  venesection  waa 
carried  in  the  last  century  is  almost  beyond  belief. 
The  Mercure  de  France  (April,  1728,  and  December, 
1729)  gives  the  particulars  of  the  illness  of  a  woman 
named  Gignault.  She  was  aged  2-1  years,  was  the 
wife  of  an  hussar,  and  resided  at  St.  Sauge,  a  town 
of  the  Nivernois.  Under  the  direction  of  Monsieur 
Theveneau,  Seigneur  de  Palmery,  M.D.,  of  St.  Sauge, 
she  was  bled  three  thousand  nine  hundred  and  four 
times  in  nine  months  {i.  c.  from  the  6th  of  September, 
1726,  to  the  3rd  of  June,  1727).  By  the  15th  of  July, 
in  the  same  year,  the  bleedings  numbered  four  thou- 
sand five  hundred  and  fifty-five.  From  the  6th  of 
September,  1726,  to  the  1st  of  December,  1729,  the 
blood-lettings  amounted  to  twenty-six  thousand  two 
hundred  and  thirty.  Did  this  really  occur?  Or  was 
the  editor  of  the  Mercure  de  France  the  original  Bar- 
on Munchausen  ? 

Such  an  account  as  the  above  ranges  us  on  the  side 

of  the  German  physician,  who  petitioned  that  the  use 

of  the  lancet  might  be  made  penal.     Garth 's  epigram 

runs:— 

"Like  a  pert  skuller,  one  physician  plies, 
And  all  his  art  and  all  his  skill  he  tries; 
But  two  physicians,  like  a  pair  of  oars, 
Conduct  you  faster  to  the  Stygian  shores." 

It  would,  however,  be  difficult  to  imagine  a  quicker 
method  to  destroy  human  life  than  that  pursued  by 
Monsieur  Theveneau.  A  second  adviser  could  hard- 
ly have  accelerated  his  movements,  or  increased  his 
determination  not  to  leave  his  reduced  patient  a 
chance  of  recovery. 

"A  rascal,"  exclaimed  a  stout,  asthmatic  old  gen- 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  237 

tlemau,  to  a  well-dressed  stranger  on  Holborn  Hill— 
"a  rascal  has  stolen  my  hat.  I  tried  to  overtake  him 
—and  I'm— so— out  of  breath— I  can't  stir  another 
inch."  The  stranger  eyed  the  old  gentleman,  who 
was  panting  and  gasping  for  hard  life,  and  then 
pleasantly  observing,  "Then  I'm  hanged,  old  boy,  if 
I  don't  have  your  wig,"  scampered  off,  leaving  his 
victim  bald  as  a  baby.  M.  Theveneau  was  the  two 
thieves  in  one.  He  first  brought  his  victim  to  a  state 
of  helplessness,  and  then  "carried  out  his  little  sys- 
tem." It  would  be  difficult  to  assign  a  proper  pun- 
ishment to  such  a  stupid  destroyer  of  human  life. 
Formerly,  in  the  duchy  of  Wurtemberg,  the  public 
executioner,  after  having  sent  out  of  the  world  a  cer- 
tain number  of  his  fellow-creatures,  was  dignified 
with  the  degree  of  doctor  of  p-hysic.  It  would  not  be 
otherwise  than  well  to  confer  on  such  murderous  phy- 
sicians as  M.  Theveneau  the  honorary  rank  of  hang- 
man extraordinary. 

The  incomes  that  have  been  realized  by  blood-letting 
alone  are  not  less  than  those  which,  in  the  present 
day,  are  realized  by  the  administration  of  chloroform. 
An  eminent  phlebotomist,  not  very  many  years  since, 
made  a  thousand  per  annum  by  the  lancet. 

About  blood-letting— by  the  lancet,  leeches,  and 
cupping  (or  boxing,  as  it  was  called  in  Elizabeth's 
days,  and  much  later)— the  curious  can  obtain  many 
interesting  particulars  in  our  old  friend  BuUeyn's 
works. 

To  open  a  vein  has  for  several  generations  been 
looked  on  as  beneath  the  dignity  of  the  leading  pro- 
fessors of  medicine  or  surgery.  In  some  cases 
phlebotomy  was  practised  as  a  sort  of  specialty  by 


238  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

surgeons  of  recognised  character:  but  generally,  at 
the  close  of  the  last  century,  it  was  left,  as  a  branch  of 
practice,  in  the  hands  of  the  apothecary.  The  occa- 
sions on  which  physicians  have  of  late  years  used  the 
lancet  are  so  few,  that  it  is  almost  a  contribution  to 
medical  gossip  to  bring  up  a  new  instance.  One  of 
the  more  recent  cases  of  a  notability  being  let  blood 
by  a  physician,  was  when  Sir  Lucas  Pepys,  on  Oct.  2, 
1806,  bled  the  Princess  of  Wales.  On  that  daj'^,  as 
her  Royal  Highness  was  proceeding  to  Norbury  Park, 
to  visit  ]Mr.  Locke,  in  a  barouche  drawn  by  four 
horses,  the  carriage  was  upset  at  Leatherhead.  Of 
the  two  ladies  who  accompanied  the  Princess,  one 
(Lady  Sheffield)  escaped  without  a  bruise,  but  the 
other  (Miss  Cholmondley)  was  thrown  to  the  ground 
and  killed  on  the  spot.  The  injuries  sustained  by  the 
Princess  were  very  slight,  but  Sir  Lucas  Pepys, 
who  luckily  happened  to  be  in  the  neighbourhood  at 
the  time  of  the  accident,  bled  her  on  his  own  respon- 
sibility, and  with  his  own  hand. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


EICHAED  MEAD. 


"Dr.  Mead,"  observed  Samuel  Johnson,  "lived 
more  in  the  broad  sunshine  of  life  than  almost  any 
man. ' ' 

Unquestionably  the  lot  of  Richard  Mead  was  an 
enviable  one.  "Without  any  high  advantages  of  birtb 
or  fortune,  or  aristocratic  connection,  he  achieved 
a  European  popularity ;  and  in  the  capital  of  his  own 
country  had  a  social  position  that  has  been  surpassed 
by  no  member  of  his  profession.  To  the  sunshine 
in  which  Mead  basked,  the  lexicographer  contributed 
a  few  rays;  for  when  James  published  his  Medicinal 
Dictionary,  the  prefatory  letter  to  Mead,  affixed  to 
the  work,  was  composed  by  Johnson  in  his  most  fe- 
licitous style. 

"Sir,— That  the  Medicinal  Dictionary  is  dedicated 
to  you,  is  to  be  imputed  only  to  your  reputation  for 
superior  skill  in  those  sciences  which  I  have  endeav- 
oured to  explain  and  t«  facilitate ;  and  you  are,  there-, 
fore,  to  consider  the  address,  if  it  be  agreeable  to  you, 
as  one  of  the  rewards  of  merit ;  and,  if  otherwise,  as 
one  of  the  inconveniences  of  eminence. 


240  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

"However  you  shall  receive  it,  my  design  cannot 
be  disappointed;  because  this  public  appeal  to  your 
judgment  will  show  that  I  do  not  found  my  hopes 
of  approbation  upon  the  ignorance  of  my  readers,  and 
that  I  fear  his  censure  least  whose  knowledge  is  the 
most  extensive.  I  am,  sir,  your  most  obedient  humble 
servant,— R.  James." 

But  the  sunshine  did  not  come  to  Mead.  He  at- 
tracted  it.  Polished,  courtly,  adroit,  and  of  an  equa- 
ble temper,  he  seemed  pleased  with  everybody,  and 
so  made  everybody  pleased  with  him.  Throughout 
life  he  was  a  Whig— staunch  and  unswerving,  not- 
withstanding the  charges  brought  against  him  by  ob- 
scure enemies  of  being  a  luke-warm  supporter  of  the 
constitutional,  and  a  subservient  worshipper  of  the 
monarchical,  party.  And  yet  his  intimate  friends  were 
of  the  adverse  faction.  The  overbearing,  insolent, 
prejudiced  Radcliffe  forgave  him  his  scholarship  and 
politics,  and  did  his  utmost  to  advance  his  inter- 
ests. 

Mead's  family  was  a  respectable  one  in  Buck- 
inghamshire. His  father  was  a  theological  writer, 
and  one  of  the  two  ministers  of  Stepney,  but  was 
ejected  from  his  preferment  for  non-conformity  on 
the  24th  of  August,  1662.  Fortunately  the  dispos- 
sessed clerk  had  a  private  fortune  on  which  to  main- 
tain his  fifteen  children,  of  whom  Richard,  the  elev- 
enth, was  born  on  the  eleventh  of  August,  1673.  The 
first  years  of  Richard's  life  were  spent  at  Stepney, 
where  the  Rev.  Matthew  Mead  continued  to  minister 
to  a  noncomformist  congregation, keeping  in  house  Mr. 
John  Nesbitt,  afterwards  a  conspicuous  nonconform- 
ist minister,  as  tutor  to  his  children.    In  1683  or  1684, 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  241 

it  being  suspected  tliat  Mr.  Mead  was  concerned  in 
(certain  designs  against  the  government,  the  worthy 
man  had  to  quit  his  flock  and  escape  from  the  emis- 
saries of  power  to  Holland.  During  the  father's  resi- 
dence abroad,  Richard  was  sent  to  a  classical  school 
kept  in  Clerkenwell  Close,  by  the  nonconformist, 
Thomas  Singleton,  who  had  formerly  been  second 
master  of  Eton.  It  was  under  this  gentleman's  tu- 
ition that  the  boy  acquired  a  sound  and  extensive 
knowledge  of  Latin  and  Greek.  In  1690  he  went  to 
Utrecht;  and  after  studying  there  for  three  years, 
proceeded  to  Leyden,  where  he  studied  botany  and 
physic.  His  academical  studies  concluded,  he  trav- 
elled with  David  Polhill  and  Dr.  Thomas  Pellet,  after- 
wards President  of  the  College  of  Physicians,  through 
Italy,  stopping  at  Florence,  Padua,  Naples,  and 
Rome.  In  the  middle  of  1696  he  returned  to  Lon- 
don, with  stores  of  information,  refined  manners,  and 
a  degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy  and  Physic,  con- 
ferred on  him  at  Padua,  on  the  sixteenth  of  August, 
1695.  Settling  at  Stepney,  and  uniting  himself  close- 
ly with  the  nonconformists,  he  commenced  the  prac- 
tice of  his  profession,  in  which  he  rapidly  advanced 
to  success.  On  the  ninth  of  May,  1703,  before  he  was 
thirty  years  of  age,  he  was  chosen  physician  of  St. 
Thomas's  Hospital,  in  Southwark.  On  obtaining  this 
preferment  he  took  a  house  in  Crutched  Friars,  and 
year  by  year  increased  the  sphere  of  his  operations. 
In  1711  he  moved  to  Austin  Friars,  to  the  house  just 
vacated  by  the  death  of  Dr.  Howe.  The  consequences 
of  this  step  taught  him  the  value,  to  a  rising  doctor, 
of  a  house  with  a  good  reputation.  Many  of  Howe's 
patients  had  got  into  a  habit  of  coming  to  the  house 


242  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

as  much  as  to  the  physician,  and  Mead  was  only  too 
glad  to  feel  their  pulses  and  flatter  them  into  good 
humour,  sound  health,  and  the  laudable  custom  of 
paying  double  fees.  He  was  appointed  Lecturer  on 
Anatomy  to  the  Company  of  Barbers  and  Surgeons. 

He  kept  himself  well  before  the  public,  as  an  au- 
thor, with  his  "Mechanical  Account  of  Poisons,"  pub- 
lished in  1702;  and  his  treatise  (1704),  "De  Imperio 
Solis  et  Lunse  in  Corpora  humana,  et  Morbis  inde 
oriundis."  He  became  a  member  of  the  Royal  So- 
ciety; and,  in  1707,  he  received  his  M.D.  diploma 
from  Oxford,  and  his  admission  to  the  fellowship  of 
the  College  of  Physicians. 

It  has  already  been  stated  how  Radcliffe  engaged 
to  introduce  Mead  to  his  patients.  When  Queen 
Anne  was  on  her  death-bed,  the  young  physician  was 
of  importance  enough  to  be  summoned  to  the  couch 
of  dying  royalty.  The  physicians  who  surrounded 
the  expiring  queen  were  afraid  to  say  what  they  all 
knew.  The  Jacobites  wanted  to  gain  time,  to  push 
off  the  announcement  of  the  queen's  state  to  the  last 
possible  moment,  so  that  the  Hanoverians  should 
not  be  able  to  take  steps  for  quietly  securing  the  suc- 
cession which  they  desired.  Mead,  however,  was  too 
earnest  a  "Whig  to  sacrifice  what  he  believed  to  be  the 
true  interests  of  the  country  to  any  considerations  of 
the  private  advantage  that  might  be  derived  by  cur- 
rying favour  with  the  Tory  magnates,  who,  hovering 
about  the  Court,  were  debating  how  they  could  best 
make  their  game.  Possibly  his  hopes  emboldened  him 
to  speak  the  truth.  Anyhow,  he  declared,  on  his  first 
visit,  that  the  queen  would  not  live  an  hour.  Charles 
Ford,  writing  to  Swift,  said,  "This  morning  when 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  243 

I  went  there  before  nine,  they  told  me  she  was  just 
expiring.  That  account  continued  above  three  hours, 
and  a  report  was  carried  to  town  that  she  was  actually 
dead.  She  was  not  prayed  for  even  in  her  own  chap- 
el at  St.  James's;  and,  what  is  more  infamous  (I) 
stocks  arose  three  per  cent,  upon  it  in  the  city.  Be- 
fore I  came  away,  she  had  recovered  a  warmth  in 
her  breast  and  one  of  her  arms;  and  all  the  doctors 
agreed  she  would,  in  all  probability,  hold  out  till  to- 
morrow— except  Mead,  who  pronounced,  several  hours 
before,  she  could  not  live  two  minutes,  and  seems  un- 
easy it  did  not  happen  so."  This  was  the  tone  uni- 
versally adopted  by  the  Jacobites.  According  to  them, 
poor  Queen  Anne  had  hard  measure  dealt  out  to  her 
by  her  physicians; — the  Tory  Radcliffe  negatively 
murdered  her  by  not  saving  her ;  the  Whig  Mead  ear- 
nestly desired  her  death.  Certainly  the  Jacobites 
had  no  reason  to  speak  well  of  Mead,  for  the  ready 
courage  with  which  he  stated  the  queen's  demise  to 
be  at  hand  gave  a  disastrous  blow  to  their  case,  and 
did  much  to  seat  George  I.  quietly  on  the  throne. 
Miss  Strickland  observes,  "It  has  always  been  con- 
sidered that  the  prompt  boldness  of  this  political  phy- 
sician (i.  e.  Mead)  occasioned  the  peaceable  procla- 
mation of  George  I.  The  queen's  demise  in  one  hour 
was  confidently  predicted  by  her  Whig  doctor.  He 
was  often  taunted  afterwards  with  the  chagrin  his 
countenance  expressed  when  the  royal  patient,  on 
being  again  blooded,  recovered  her  speech  and 
senses. ' ' 

On  the  death  of  Radcliffe,  the  best  part  of  his  em- 
pire descended  to  Mead,  who,  having  already  reaped 
the  benefit  of  occupying  the  nest  which  Howe  va- 


244  A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

catad  at  the  summons  of  death,  wisely  resolved  to 
take  possession  of  Radcliffe's  vacated  mansion  in 
Bloomsbury  Square.  This  removal  from  Austin 
Friars  to  the  more  fashionable  quarter  of  town  was 
effected  without  delay.  Indeed,  Radcliffe  was  not 
buried  when  Mead  entered  his  house.  As  his  practice 
lay  now  more  in  the  "West  than  the  East  end  of  town, 
the  prosperous  physician  resigned  his  appointment 
at  St.  Thomas's,  and,  receiving  the  thanks  of  the  grand 
committee  for  his  services,  was  presented  with  the 
staff  of  a  governor  of  the  charity.  Radcliffe's  prac- 
tice and  house  were  not  the  only  possessions  of  that 
sagacious  practitioner  which  Mead  contrived  to  ac- 
quire. Into  his  hands  also  passed  the  doctor's  gold- 
headed  cane  of  ofSce.  This  wand  became  the  proper- 
ty successively  of  Radcliffe,  Askew,  Pitcairn,  and 
Baillie,  the  arms  of  all  which  celebrated  physicians 
are  engraved  on  its  head.  On  the  death  of  Dr.  Baillie, 
Mrs.  Baillie  presented  the  cane,  as  an  interesting  pro- 
fessional relic,  to  the  College  of  Physicians,  in  the  li- 
brary of  which  august  and  learned  body  it  is  now  pre- 
served. Some  years  since  the  late  respected  Dr.  Mac- 
michael  made  the  adventures  of  this  stick  the  subject 
of  an  agreeable  little  book,  which  was  published  undei* 
the  title  of  "The  Gold-Headed  Cane." 

The  largest  income  Mead  ever  made  in  one  year 
was  £7000.  For  several  years  he  received  between 
£5000  and  £6000  per  annum.  When  the  great  de- 
preciation of  the  currency  is  taken  into  account,  one 
may  affirm,  with  little  fear  of  contradiction,  that  no 
living  physician  is  at  the  present  time  earning  as 
much.  Mead,  however,  made  his  income  without  any 
avaricious  or  stingy  practices.     In  every  respect  he 


i.   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  245 

displayed  that  generosity  which  has  for  generations 
been  the  glorious  distinction  of  his  profession.  At 
home  his  fee  was  a  guinea.  When  he  visited  a  pa- 
tient of  good  rank  and  condition,  in  consultation  or 
otherwise,  he  expected  to  have  two  guineas,  or  even 
more.  But  to  the  apothecaries  who  waited  on  him 
at  his  coffee-houses,  he  charged  (like  Radcliffe)  only 
half-a-guinea  for  prescriptions,  written  without  see- 
ing the  patient.  His  evening  coffee-house  was  Bat- 
son's,  frequented  by  the  profession  even  down  to  Sir 
"William  Blizard;  and  in  the  forenoons  he  received 
apothecaries  at  Tom's,  near  Covent  Garden.  In 
Mead's  time  the  clergy,  as  a  body,  were  unable  to  pay 
the  demands  which  professional  etiquette  would  have 
required  the  physician  to  make  on  them  if  he  had 
any.  It  is  still  the  humane  custom  of  physicians  and 
eminent  surgeons  not  to  accept  fees  from  curates, 
half-pay  ofQcers  in  the  army  and  navy,  and  men  of 
letters;  and  no  one  has  more  reason  than  the  writer 
of  these  pages  to  feel  grateful  for  the  delicacy  with 
which  they  act  on  this  rule,  and  the  benevolent  zeal 
with  which  they  seem  anxious  to  drown  the  sense  ol 
obligation  (which  a  gratuitous  patient  necessarily  ex- 
periences) in  increased  attention  and  kindness,  as  if 
their  good  deeds  were  a  peculiar  source  of  pleasure 
to  themselves. 

But  in  the  last  century  the  beneficed  clergy  were  in 
a  very  different  pecuniary  condition  from  that  which 
they  at  present  enjoy.  Till  the  Tithe  Communication 
Act  passed,  the  parson  (unless  he  was  a  sharp  man 
of  business,  shrewd  and  unscrupulous  as  a  horse-job- 
ber, and  ready  to  have  an  unintermittent  war  with 
his  parishioners)  never  received  anj'thing  like  what 


246  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

he  was  entitled  to  of  the  produce  of  the  land.  Often 
he  did  not  get  half  his  dues;  and  even  when  he  did 
obtaiij  a  fair  tithe,  liis  receipts  were  small  compared 
with  what  his  successor  in  the  present  generation 
has  from  the  same  source.  Agriculture  was  then  in 
such  a  backward  state,  and  land  was  so  ill-cultivated, 
that  the  rector  of  a  large  parish  of  good  land  was 
justly  entitled  only  to  a  sum  that  a  modern  rent- 
charge  holder  would  regard  with  painful  surprise  if 
told  that  he  might  take  nothing  more  for  his  share  in 
the  fruits  of  the  earth.  The  beneficed  clergy  were 
a  comparatively  poor  body.  The  curate  perhaps  was 
not  in  a  worse  state  than  he  is  in  now,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  a  worse  can  hardly  be.  To  add  to  the 
impoverished  appearance  of  the  clerical  profession, 
there  existed  in  every  capital  and  country  town  the 
luckless  nonconforming  clergy,  bereft  of  the  emolu- 
ments of  their  vocation,  and  often  reduced  to  a  con- 
dition scarcely— if  at  all— removed  from  begging. 
The  title  of  Reverend  was  still  affixed  to  their  names 
—their  costume  was  still  that  of  their  order— and' 
by  large  masses  of  the  people  they  were  regarded  with 
more  reverence  and  affection  than  the  well-fed  Vicars 
of  Bray,  who,  with  mealy  mouths  and  elastic  con- 
sciences, saw  only  the  butter  on  one  side  of  their 
bread,  and  not  the  dirt  on  the  other.  Archbishop 
Sancroft  died  on  his  little  farm  in  Suffolk,  having 
for  years  subsisted  on  about  fifty  pounds  a-year. 
"When  such  was  the  fate  of  an  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, the  straits  to  which  the  ejected  vicars  or  dis- 
abled curates  were  brought  can  be  imagined— but 
scarcely  described.  In  the  great  towns  these  unfor- 
tunate gentlemen  swarmed,  gaining  a  wretched  sub- 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  247 

sistence  as  ushers  in  schools,  tutors,  secretaries— not 
unfrequently  as  domestic  servants. 

In  such  a  condition  of  the  established  church,  the 
rule  of  never  taking  money  from  "the  cloth"  was 
almost  invariably  observed  by  the  members  of  the 
medical  profession. 

Mead  once— and  only  once — departed  from  this 
rule.  Mr.  Robert  Leake,  a  fellow  of  St.  John's  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  called  on  the  doctor  and  sought  his 
advice.  The  patient's  ill-health  had  been  in  a  great 
degree  effected  by  doctoring  himself — that  is,  exhibit- 
ing, according  to  his  own  notions  of  medical  practice,' 
some  of  Dr.  Cheyne's  prescriptions. 

"Do  as  I  tell  you,"  said  Mead,  "and  I'll  set  you  up 
again. ' ' 

For  a  time  Leake  cheerfully  obeyed;  but  soon— al- 
though his  case  was  progressing  most  favourably— he 
had  the  bad  taste  to  suggest  that  a  recurrence  to  some 
of  Cheyne's  prescriptions  would  be  advisable.  Mead, 
of  course,  was  not  pleased  with  such  folly,  but  con- 
tinued his  attendance  till  his  patient's  health  was  re- 
stored. Leake  then  went  through  the  form  of  asking 
to  what  amount  he  was  in  the  physician's  debt. 

"Sir,"  answered  Mead,  "I  have  never  yet,  in  the 
whole  course  of  my  practice,  taken  or  demanded  the 
least  fee  from  any  clergyman;  but,  since  you  have 
been  pleased,  contrary  to  what  I  have  met  with  in  any 
other  gentleman  of  your  profession,  to  prescribe  to  me 
rather  than  follow  my  prescriptions,  when  you  had 
committed  the  care  of  your  recovery  to  my  skill  and 
trust,  you  must  not  take  it  amiss,  nor  will,  I  hope, 
think  it  unfair,  if  I  demand  ten  guineas  of  you." 

With  much  reluctance,  and  a  wry  face,  Leake  paid 


248  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

the  money,  but  the  doctor  subsequently  returned  him 
more  than  half  of  it. 

Of  course  Mead  did  not  gain  the  prize  of  his  pro- 
fession without  a  few  rough  contests  with  competitors 
in  the  race  of  honour.  "Woodward,  the  Professor  of 
Physic  at  the  Gresham  College,  attacked  him  with 
bitterness  in  his  "State  of  Physic  and  Diseases,"  and 
made  himself  even  more  obnoxious  in  his  personal  de- 
meanour to  him  in  public.  Some  insult  offered  to  him 
by  Woodward  so  infuriated  Mead,  that  the  latter  drew 
his  sword  and  ordered  his  adversary  to  defend  him- 
self. The  duel  terminated  in  Mead's  favour,  as  far 
as  martial  prowess  was  concerned,  for  he  disarmed 
"Woodward  and  ordered  him  to  beg  for  his  life. 

"Never,  till  I  am  your  patient,"  answered  "Wood- 
ward, happily. 

The  memory  of  this  /Esculapian  battle  is  preserved 
in  an  engraving  in  Ward's  "Lives  of  the  Gresham 
Professors."  The  picture  is  a  view  of  Gresham  Street 
College,  with  a  gateway  entering  from  Broad  Street, 
marked  25,  within  which  Woodward  is  represented 
as  kneeling  and  submissively  yielding  his  sword  to 
Mead.  Ward  was  one  of  Mead's  warmest  friends, 
and  certainly  on  this  occasion  displayed  his  friend- 
ship in  a  very  graceful  and  effective  manner. 

The  doctor  would  gladly  have  never  had  to  deal 
with  a  more  dangerous  antagonist  than  Woodward; 
but  the  time  came  when  he  had  to  run  for  safety,  and 
that  too  from  a  woman.  He  was  in  attendance  by  the 
bed-side  of  the  Duke  of  Marlborough,  who  was  suf- 
fering from  indisposition,  when  her  Grace— the  cele- 
brated Sarah— flew  into  a  violent  rage  at  some  remark 
which  the  physician  had  dared  to  make.     She  even 


A   BOOK   ^VBOUT   DOCTORS.  249 

threatened  him  with  personal  chastisement,  and  was 
proceeding  to  carry  out  her  menaces,  when  Mead, 
recognizing  the  peril  of  his  position,  turned  and 
fled  from  the  room.  The  duchess  ran  after  him,  and, 
pursuing  him  down  the  grand  staircase,  vowed  she 
would  pull  off  his  wig,  and  dash  it  in  his  face.  The 
doctor  luckily  was  a  better  runner  than  her  Grace, 
and  escaped. 

Envj'  is  the  shadow  of  success,  and  detraction  is 
the  echo  of  its  voice.  A  host  of  pamphleteers,  with 
just  courage  enough  to  print  lies,  to  which  they  had 
not  the  spirit  to  affix  their  obscure  names,  hissed 
their  malignity  at  the  fortimate  doctor.  The  members 
of  tlie  Faculty,  accustomed  though  they  are  to  the 
jealousies  and  animosities  which  are  important  under- 
currents in  every  fraternity,  would  in  these  days 
scarcely  credit  the  accounts  which  could  be  given  ot 
the  coarseness  and  baseness  of  the  anonymous  rascals 
who  lampooned  Mead.  It  is  painful  to  know  that 
some  of  the  worst  offenders  were  themselves  phy- 
sicians. In  1722,  appeared  "The  Art  of  getting  into 
Practice  in  Physick,  here  at  present  in  London.  Id 
a  letter  to  that  very  ingenious  and  most  learned  Phy- 
sician (Lately  come  to  Town),  Dr  Timothy  Van- 
bustle,  M.D.— A.B.C.,"  the  writer  of  this  satire  at- 
tributes to  the  dead  Radcliffe  the  practices  to  which 
Hannes  was  accused  of  having  resorted.     "Thus  the 

famous  R fe,   'tis  said,  on  his  first  arrival,  had 

half  the  porters  in  town  employed  to  call  for  him  at 
all  the  coffee-houses  and  public  places,  so  that  his 
name  might  be  known."  The  sting  of  the  publica- 
tion, the  authorship  of  which  by  a  strange  error  has 
been  attributed  to  Mead,  is  throughout  directed  at 


250  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

him.  It  is  more  than  suggested  that  he,  to  creep  up 
into  practice,  had  associated  in  early  life  with  "wom- 
en, midwives,  nurses,  and  apothecaries,"  and  that  he 
had  interested  motives  for  being  very  gentle  ' '  in  tak^ 
ing  fees  of  the  clergy,  of  whatsoever  sect  or  opinion." 
Here  is  a  stab  that  the  reader  of  the  foregoing  pages 
can  appreciate:  "As  to  Nostrums,  I  cannot  much 
encourage  you  to  trade  in  these  if  you  would  propose 
to  get  universal  business ;  for  though  they  may  serve 
to  make  you  known  at  first,  particularly  in  such  a 
way,  yet  it  will  not  promote  general  business,  but  on 
the  contrary.  I  rather  therefore  would  advise  you 
to  court,  flatter,  and  chime  in  with  the  chief  in  Play, 
and  luckily  a  noted  practitioner  shotdd  drop,  do  you 
be  as  sure  and  ready  to  get  into  his  house  as  he  is  into 
his  coffin.'' 

More  scandal  of  this  sort  may  be  found  in  "An 
account  of  a  Strange  and  Wonderful  Dream.  Dedi- 
cated to  Doctor  M— d,"  published  1719.  It  is  insin- 
uated in  the  dream  that  his  Latin  writings  were  not 
his  own  composition.  The  troubles  of  his  domestic 
life  are  dragged  before  the  public.  "It  unluckily 
happen 'd  that,  just  as  Mulso  discovered  his  wife's 
intrigues,  his  effects  were  seized  on  by  his  creditors, 
his  chariot  and  horses  were  sold,  and  he  himself  re- 
duced to  the  state  of  a  foot-quack.  In  this  condition 
he  had  continued  to  this  day,  had  he  not  been  re- 
trieved from  poverty  and  contempt  by  the  recommen- 
dation of  a  physician  of  great  note.  Upon  this  he 
spruced  up,  looked  gay,  roU'd  about  in  a  chariot.  At 
this  time  he  fell  ill  of  the  scrihendi  cacoethes,  and,  by 
the  help  of  two  mathematicians  and  an  usher,  was 
delivered  of  a  book  in  a  learned  language." 


A    BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  251 

Mead  did  not  long  occupy  Radcliffe's  house  in 
Bloomsbury  Square.  In  1719  he  moved  to  the  impos- 
ing residence  in  Ormond  Street,  to  which  in  1732  he 
added  a  gallery  for  the  accommodation  of  his  library 
and  museum. 

Of  ilead's  various  contributions  to  medical  litera- 
ture it  is  of  course  not  the  province  of  this  work  to 
speak  critically.  The  Medica  Sacra  is  a  literary  cu- 
riosity, and  so  is  the  doctor's  paper  published  in  1735, 
in  which  he  recommends  a  compound  of  pepper  and 
lichen  cinereus  terrestris  as  a  specific  against  the  bite 
of  a  mad  dog.  Dampier,  the  traveller,  used  this  lichen 
for  the  same  purpose.  The  reader  need  not  be  re- 
minded of  the  popularity  attained  by  this  antidote, 
dividing  the  public  favour,  as  it  did,  with  Dr. 
James's  Turpeth  Mineral,  and  the  Musk  and  Cinna- 
bar. 

Mead  was  married  twice.  His  first  wife  was  Ruth 
Marsh,  the  daughter  of  a  pious  London  tradesman. 
She  died  in  1719,  twenty  years  after  her  marriage, 
leaving  behind  her  four  children— three  daughters, 
who  all  married  weU,  and  one  son,  William  Mead. 
If  any  reliance  is  to  be  placed  on  the  statements  of 
the  lampoon  writers,  the  doctor  was  by  no  means  for- 
tunate in  this  union.  He  married,  however,  a  second 
time— taking  for  his  bride,  when  he  was  more  than 
fifty  years  old,  Anne,  the  daughter  of  Sir  Rowland 
Alston,  of  Odell,  a  Bedfordshire  baronet. 

One  of  the  pleasant  episodes  in  Mead's  life  is  his 
conduct  towards  his  dear  friend  and  political  an- 
tagonist, Freind— the  Jacobite  physician,  and  Mem- 
ber of  Parliament  for  Launceston.  On  suspicion  of 
being  concerned  in  the  Atterbury  plot,  Freind  was 


252  A  BOOK   ABOUa    DOCTORS. 

committed  to  the  Tower.  During  his  confinement, 
that  lasted  some  months,  he  employed  himself  calmly 
on  the  composition  of  a  Latin  letter,  "On  certain 
kinds  of  Small-Pox,"  and  the  "History  of  Physic, 
from  the  time  of  Galen  to  the  Commencement  of  the 
Sixteenth  Century."  Mead  busied  himself  to  obtain 
his  friend's  release;  and,  being  called  to  attend  Sir 
Robert  Walpole,  pleaded  so  forcibly  for  the  prisoner, 
that  the  minister  allowed  him  to  be  discharged  on 
bail— his  sureties  being  Dr.  Mead,  Dr.  Ilulse,  Dr. 
Levet,  and  Dr.  Hale.  To  celebrate  the  termination  of 
Freind  's  captivity.  Mead  called  together  on  a  sudden 
a  large  party  in  Ormond  Street,  composed  of  men  of 
all  shades  of  opinion.  Just  as  Freind  was  about  to 
take  his  leave  for  his  own  residence  in  Albemarle 
Street,  accompanied  by  Arbuthnot,  who  resided  in 
Cork  Street,  Burlington  Gardens,  Mead  took  him 
aside  into  a  private  room,  and  presented  him  with 
a  case  containing  the  fees  he  had  received  from  the 
Tory  doctor's  patients  during  his  imprisonment. 
They  amounted  to  no  less  than  five  thousand  guin- 
eas. 

Mead's  style  of  living  was  very  liberal.  From  the 
outset  to  the  close  of  his  career  he  was  the  companion 
of  men  whom  it  was  an  honour  to  treat  hospitably. 
He  was  the  friend  of  Pope,  Newton,  and  Bentley.  His 
doors  were  always  open  to  every  visitor  who  came 
from  a  foreign  country  to  these  shores,  with  any  claim 
whatever  on  the  goodwill  of  society.  To  be  at  the 
same  time  a  patron  of  the  arts,  and  a  liberal  enter- 
tainer of  many  guests,  demands  no  ordinary  expendi- 
ture. Mead  died  comparatively  poor.  The  sale  of  his 
library,    pictures,    statues,    and    curiosities,    realized 


A   BOOK  ABOTJT   DOCTORS.  253 

about  £16,000,  and  he  had  other  property  amounting 
to  about  £35,000 ;  but,  after  the  pajinent  of  his  debts, 
not  more  than  £20,000  remained  to  be  divided  amongst 
his  four  children.  His  only  son,  however,  was  amply 
provided  for,  having  entered  into  the  possession  of 
£30,000  under  wall  of  Dr.  Mead's  unmarried  brother 
Samuel,  an  eminent  barrister,  and  a  Commissioner  of 
the  Customs. 

Fortunate  beyond  fortunate  men,  Mead  had  the 
great  misfortune  of  living  too  long.  His  sight  failed, 
and  his  powers  underwent  that  gradual  decay  which 
is  the  saddest  of  all  possible  conclusions  to  a  vigor- 
ous and  dignified  existence.  Stories  might  be  ferreted 
up  of  the  indignities  to  which  he  submitted  at  the 
hands  of  a  domineering  valet.  Long,  however,  before 
he  sunk  into  second  childhood,  he  excited  the  ridicule 
of  the  town  by  his  vanity,  and  absurd  pretensions  to 
be  a  lady-killer.  The  extravagances  of  his  amorous 
senility  were  whispered  about;  and,  eventually,  some 
hateful  fellow  seized  hold  of  the  unpleasant  rumours, 
and  published  them  in  a  scandalous  novelette,  called 
"The  Cornutor  of  Seventy-five;  being  a  genuine  nar- 
rative of  the  Life,  Adventures,  and  Amours  of  Don 
Eicardo  Eoneywater,  Fellow  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians  at  Madrid,  Salamanca,  and  Toledo,  and 
President  of  the  Academy  of  Sciences  in  Lapland ; 
containing,  amongst  other  most  diverting  particulars, 

his  intrigue  with  Donna  Maria  W s,  of  Via  Vin- 

culosa— a?!£fZice,  Fetter  Lane— in  the  city  of  Madrid. 
Written,  originally,  in  Spanish,  by  the  Author  of  Don 
Quixot,  and  translated  into  English  by  a  Graduate  of 
the  College  of  ]Mecca,  in  Arabia."  The  "Puella  fab- 
ri,"  as  Greenfield  designates  the  damsel  who  warmed 


254  A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

the  doctor's  aged  heart,  was  the  daughter  of  a  black- 
smith in  Fetter  Lane;  and  to  please  her,  Head- 
long past  threescore  years  and  ten— went  to  Paris, 
and  learnt  dancing,  under  Dupre,  giving  as  an  ex- 
cuse that  his  health  needed  active  muscular  exer- 
cise. 

Dr.  Mead  died  on  February  16, 1754,  in  his  eighty- 
first  year.  He  was  buried  in  the  Temple  Church,  by- 
the  side  of  his  brother  Samuel.  His  memory  has 
been  honoured  with  busts  and  inscriptions— in  West- 
minster Abbey,  and  the  College  of  Physicians. 

Mead  was  not  the  first  of  his  name  to  enter  the 
medical  profession.  William  George  Meade  was  an 
eminent  physician  at  Tunbridge  Wells;  and  dying 
there  on  the  4th  of  November,  1652,  was  buried  at 
Ware,  in  Hertfordshire.  This  gentleman  left  £5  a- 
year  for  ever  to  the  poor ;  but  he  is  more  remarkable 
for  longevity  than  generosity.  He  died  at  the  extra- 
ordinary age  of  148  years  and  nine  months.  This 
is  one  of  the  most  astonishing  instances  of  longevity 
on  record.  Old  Parr,  dying  at  152  years  of  age,  ex- 
ceeded it  only  by  4  years.  The  celebrated  Countess 
Desmond  was  some  years  more  than  140  at  the  time 
of  her  death.  Henry  Read,  minister  of  Hardwicke, 
Co.  Northampton,  numbered  only  132  years ;  and  the 
Lancashire  woman  (the  Cricket  of  the  Hedge)  did 
not  outlive  the  141st  year.  But  all  these  ages  become 
insignificant  when  put  by  the  side  of  the  169  years 
to  which  Henry  Jenkins  protracted  his  earthly  so- 
journ- 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

IMAGINATION  AS  A  REMEDIAL  POWEB. 

Astrology,  alchemy,  the  once  general  belief  in  the 
healing  effects  of  the  royal  touch,  the  use  of  charma 
and  amulets,  and  mesmerism,  are  only  various  exhibi- 
tions of  one  superstition,  having  for  their  essence  the 
same  little  grain  of  truth,  and  for  their  outward  ex- 
pression different  forms  of  error.  Disconnected  as 
they  appear  at  first  sight,  a  brief  examination  dis- 
covers the  common  features  which  prove  them  to  be 
of  one  family.  By  turns  they  have— each  of  them— 
given  humiliating  evidence  of  the  irrational  extrava- 
gances that  reasoning  creatures  are  capable  of  commit- 
ting; and  each  of  them,  also,  has  conferred  some 
benefits  on  mankind.  The  gibberish  of  Geber,  and 
the  alchemists  who  preceded  and  followed  him,  led  to 
the  study  of  chemistry,  the  utility  and  importance  of 
which  science  we  have  only  begun  rightly  to  appre- 
ciate ;  and  a  curiosity  about  the  foolishness  of  astrolo- 
gy led  Sir  Isaac  Newton  to  his  astronomical  inquiries. 
Lord  Bacon  says— "The  sons  of  chemistry,  while  they 
are  busy  seeking  the  hidden  gold— whether  real  or 
not— have  by  turning  over  and  trying,  brought  much 


256  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

profit  and  convenience  to  mankind."  And  if  the  de- 
lusions of  talismans,  amulets,  and  charms,  and  the  im- 
postures of  Mesmer,  have  had  no  greater  consequences, 
they  have  at  least  afforded,  to  the  observant  and  re- 
flective, much  valuable  instruction  with  regard  to  the 
constitution  of  the  human  mind. 

In  the  history  of  these  superstitions  we  have  to 
consider  the  universal  faith  which  men  in  all  ages 
have  entertained  in  planetary  influence,  and  which, 
so  long  as  day  and  night,  and  the  moon  and  tides  en- 
dure, few  will  be  found  so  ignorant  or  so  insensible  as 
to  question.  The  grand  end  of  alchemy  was  to  trans- 
mute the  base  metals  into  gold ;  and  it  proposed  to 
achieve  this  by  obtaining  possession  of  the  different 
fires  transmitted  by  the  heavenly  bodies  to  our  planet, 
and  subjecting,  according  to  a  mysterious  system,  the 
comparatively  worthless  substances  of  the  mineral 
world  to  the  forces  of  these  fires. 

"Now,"  says  Paracelsus,  in  his  "Secrets  of  Al- 
chemy," "we  come  to  speake  of  a  manifold  spirit  or 
fire,  which  is  the  cause  of  variety  and  diversity  of 
creatures,  so  that  there  cannot  one  be  found  right  like 
another,  and  the  same  in  every  part;  as  it  may  be 
seen  in  metals,  of  which  there  is  none  which  hath  an- 
other like  itself;  the  Sun  produceth  his  gold;  the 
Moon  produceth  another  metal  far  different,  to  wit, 
silver;  Alars  another,  that  is  to  say,  iron;  Jupiter  pro- 
duceth another  kind  of  metal  to  wit,  tin;  Venus  an- 
other, which  is  copper ;  and  Saturn  another  kind,  that 
is  to  say,  lead :  so  that  they  are  all  unlike,  and  several 
one  from  another;  the  same  appeareth  to  be  as  well 
amongst  men  as  all  other  creatures,  the  cause  where- 
of is  the  multiplicity  of  fire Where 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  257 

there  is  no  great  mixture  of  the  elements,  the  Sun 
bringeth  forth;  where  it  is  a  little  more  thick,  the 
Moon;  where  more  gross,  Venus;  and  thus,  according 
to  the  diversity  of  mixtures,  are  produced  divers  met- 
als ;  so  that  no  metal  appeared  in  the  same  mine  like 
another. ' ' 

This,  which  is  an  extract  from  Turner's  translation 
of  Paracelsus 's  "Secrets  of  Alchemy"  (published  in 
1655),  may  be  taken  as  a  fair  sample  of  the  jargon  of 
alchemy. 

The  same  faith  in  planetary  influence  was  the 
grand  feature  of  astrology,  which  regarded  all  nat- 
ural phenomena  as  the  effects  of  the  stars  acting  upon 
the  earth.  Diseases  of  all  kinds  were  referable  to 
the  heavenly  bodies ;  and  so,  also,  were  the  properties 
of  those  herbs  or  other  objects  which  were  believed 
in  as  remedial  agents.  In  ancient  medicine,  phar- 
macy was  at  one  period  only  the  application  of  the 
dreams  of  astrology  to  the  vegetable  world.  The  herb 
which  put  an  ague  or  madness  to  flight,  did  so  by  rea- 
son of  a  mystic  power  imparted  to  it  by  a  particular 
constellation,  the  outward  signs  of  which  quality  were 
to  be  found  in  its  colour  or  aspect.  Indeed,  it  was  not 
enough  that  "a  simple,"  impregnated  with  curative 
power  by  heavenly  beams,  should  be  culled ;  but  it  had 
to  be  culled  at  a  particular  period  of  the  year,  at  a 
particular  day  of  the  month,  even  at  a  particular 
hour,  when  the  irradiating  source  of  its  efficacy  was 
supposed  to  be  affecting  it  with  a  peculiar  force ;  and, 
moreover,  it  had  to  be  removed  from  the  ground  or 
the  stem  on  which  it  grew  with  a  particular  instru- 
ment or  gesture  of  the  body— a  disregard  of  which 
forms  would  have  obviated  the  kindly  influence  of 

4—17 


258  A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

the  particular  star,  without  whose  benignant  aid  the 
physician  and  the  drug  were  alike  powerless. 

Medical  practitioners  smile  now  at  the  mention  of 
these  absurdities.  But  many  of  them  are  ignorant 
that  they,  in  their  daily  practice,  help  to  perpetuate 
the  observance  of  one  of  these  ridiculed  forms.  The 
sign  which  every  member  of  the  Faculty  puts  before 
his  prescriptions,  and  which  is  very  generally  inter- 
preted as  an  abbreviation  for  Recipe,  is  but  the  as- 
trological symbol  of  Jupiter. 

It  was  on  this  principle  that  a  belief  became  preva- 
lent that  certain  objects,  either  of  natural  formation 
or  constructed  by  the  instruments  of  art,  had  the  pow- 
er of  counteracting  noxious  agents.  An  intimate  con- 
nection was  supposed  to  exist  between  the  form  or 
colour  of  an  external  substance  and  the  use  to  which 
it  ought  to  be  put.  Red  objects  had  a  mysterious  in- 
fluence on  inflammatory  diseases ;  and  yellow  ones  had 
a  similar  power  on  those  who  were  discoloured  with 
jaundice.  Edward  II. 's  physician,  John  of  Gaddes- 
den,  informs  us,  "When  the  son  of  the  renowned 
King  of  England  lay  sick  of  the  small-pox,  I  took 
care  that  everything  round  the  bed  should  be  of  a  red 
colour,  which  succeeded  so  completely  that  the  Prince 
was  restored  to  perfect  health  without  a  vestige  of  a 
pustule  remaining."  Even  as  late  as  1765,  this  was 
put  in  practice  to  the  Emperor  Francis  I.  The  ear- 
liest talismans  were  natural  objects,  with  a  more  or 
less  striking  external  character,  imagined  to  have  been 
impressed  upon  them  by  the  planets  of  whose  influ- 
ence they  were  especially  susceptible,  and  of  whose 
virtues  they  were  beyond  all  other  substances  the  re- 
cipients.    The  amulet  (which  differs  little  from  the 


ig  were 


daily  pract 


which  is  very  ^ 
•■  Recip*. 


An  Accident 


•iXa.     ToK.  ■£ 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  259 

talisman,  save  in  that  it  must  be  worn  suspended  upon 
the  person  it  is  to  protect,  whereas  the  talisman  might 
be  kept  by  its  fortunate  possessor  locked  up  in  his 
treasure-house )  had  a  like  origin. 

But  when  once  a  superstitious  regard  was  paid  to 
the  external  marks  of  a  natural  object,  it  was  a  short 
and  easy  step  to  produce  the  semblances  of  the  revered 
characters  by  an  artificial  process,  and  then  be- 
stow on  them  the  reverential  feelings  which  had  pre- 
viously been  directed  to  their  originals.  The  ordi- 
nary course  taken  by  a  superstition  in  its  degradation 
is  one  where  its  first  sentiment  becomes  lost  to  sight, 
and  its  form  is  dogmatically  insisted  on.  It  was  so 
in  that  phase  of  feticism  which  consisted  in  the  blind 
reliance  put  on  artificial  talismans  and  amulets.  The 
original  significance  of  the  talisman— the  truth  which 
was  embodied  in  it  as  the  emblem  of  the  unseen  pow- 
ers that  had  produced  it,  in  accordance  with  natural 
operations — was  forgotten.  The  rows  of  lines  and 
scratches,  and  the  variegations  of  its  colour,  were  only 
thought  of;  and  the  cunning  of  man— ever  ready  to 
make  a  god  for  himself — was  exerted  to  improve  upon 
them.  In  the  multitude  of  new  devices  came  inscrip- 
tions of  mystic  numbers,  strange  signs,  agglomera- 
tions of  figures,  and  scraps  from  sacred  rituals- 
Abraxas  and  Abracadabra,  and  the  Pi-fo-fum  non- 
sense of  the  later  charms. 

Creatures  that  were  capable  of  detecting  the  influ- 
ence of  the  planetary  system  on  that  portion  of  Na- 
ture which  is  unquestionably  affected  by  it,  and  of 
imagining  its  presence  in  inanimate  objects,  which, 
to  use  cautious  language,  have  never  been  proved  by 
science  to  be  sensible  of  such  a  power,  of  course  mag- 


260  A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

nified  its  consequences  in  all  that  related  to  the  human 
intellect  and  character.  The  instant  in  which  a  man 
entered  the  world  was  regarded  as  the  one  when  he  was 
most  susceptible.  Indeed,  a  babe  was  looked  upon 
as  a  piece  of  warm  and  pliant  wax :  and  the  particular 
planet  which  was  in  the  ascendant  when  the  nurse 
placed  the  new  child  of  Adam  ainoiigst  the  people  of 
earth  stamped  upon  it  a  distinctive  charactery.  To 
be  born  under  a  particular  star  was  then  an  ex- 
pression that  meant  something.  On  the  nature  of  the 
star  it  depended  whether  homunculus,  squealing  out 
its  first  agonies,  was  to  be  morose  or  gentle,  patient 
or  choleric,  lively  or  saturnine,  amorous  or  vindictive 
—a  warrior  or  a  poet— a  dreamer  or  a  man  of  ac- 
tion. 

Laughing  at  the  refinements  of  absurdity  at  which 
astrology  had  arrived  in  his  day,  the  author  of  "Hu- 
dibras"  says:— 

"There's  but  the  twinkling  of  a  star 
Between  a  man  of  peace  and  war; 
A  thief  and  justice,  fool  and  knave, 
A  huffing  officer  and  slave; 
A  craft)-  lawyer  and  a  pickpocket, 
A  great  philosopher  and  a  blockhead ; 
A  formal  preacher  and  a  player, 
A  learned  physician  and  manslayer. 
As  if  men  from  stars  did  suck 
Old  age,  diseases,  and  ill-luck, 
Wit,  folly,  honour,  virtue,  vice, 
Travel  and  women,  trade  and  dice ; 
And  draw,  with  the  first  air  they  breathe, 
Battle  and  murder,  sudden  death. 
Are  not  these  fine  commodities 
To  be  imported  from  the  skies, 
And  vended  here  amongst  the  rabble 
For  staple  goods  and  warrantable?" 

Involved  in  this  view  of  the  universe  was  the  doc- 
trine that  some  exceptional  individuals  were  born  far 


A   BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS.  261 

superior  to  the  mass  of  their  fellow-creatures.  Ab- 
surd as  astrology  was,  still,  its  postulates  having  once 
been  granted,  the  logic  was  unassailable  which  argued 
that  those  few  on  whose  birth  lucky  stars  had  shone 
benignantly,  had  a  destiny  and  an  organization  dis- 
tinct from  those  of  ordinary  mortals.  The  dicta  of 
modern  liberalism,  and  the  Transatlantic  dogma  that 
"all  men  are  by  nature  born  equal,"  would  have  ap- 
peared to  an  orthodox  believer  in  this  planetary  re- 
ligion nothing  better  than  the  ravings  of  madness  or 
impiety.  Monarchs  of  men,  whatever  lowly  station 
they  at  first  occupied  in  life,  were  exalted  above  oth- 
ers because  they  possessed  a  distinctive  excellence 
imparted  to  them  at  the  hour  of  birth  by  the  silent 
rulers  of  the  night.  It  was  useless  to  strive  against 
such  authority.  To  contend  with  it  would  have  been 
to  wrestle  with  the  Almighty— ever  present  in  hia 
peculiarly  favoured  creatures. 

Rulers  being  such,  it  was  but  natural  for  their  ser- 
vile worshippers  to  believe  them  capable  of  imparting 
to  others,  by  a  glance  of  the  eye  or  a  touch  of  the 
hand,  an  infinitesimal  portion  of  the  virtue  that  dwelt 
within  them.  To  be  favoured  with  their  smiles  was 
to  bask  in  sunshine  amid  perfumes.  To  be  visited 
with  their  frowns  was  to  be  chilled  to  the  marrow, 
and  feel  the  hail  come  down  like  keen  arrows  from 
an  angry  sky.  To  be  touched  by  their  robes  was  to 
receive  new  vigour.  Hence  came  credence  in  the 
miraculous  power  of  the  imposition  of  royal,  or  oth- 
erwise sacred  hands.  Pyrrhus  and  Vespasian  cured 
maladies  by  the  touch  of  their  fingers;  and,  long  be- 
fore and  after  them,  earthly  potentates  and  spiritual 
directors  had,  both  in  the  East  and  the  West,  to 


262  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

prove  their  title  to  authority  by  displaying  the  same 
faculty. 

In  our  own  country  more  than  in  any  other  region 
of  Christendom  this  superstition  found  supporters. 
From  Edward  the  Confessor  down  to  Queen  Anne, 
who  laid  her  healing  hands  on  Samuel  Johnson,  it 
flourished;  and  it  was  a  rash  man  who,  trusting  to 
the  blind  guidance  of  human  reason  dared  to  question 
that  manifestation  of  the  divinity  which  encircles 
kingship.  Doubtless  the  gift  of  money  made  to  each 
person  who  was  touched  did  not  tend  to  bring  the 
cure  into  dis-esteem.  It  can  be  easily  credited  that, 
out  of  the  multitude  who  flocked  to  the  presence  of 
Elizabeth  and  the  Stuart  kings  for  the  benefit  of  their 
miraculous  manipulations,  there  were  many  shrewd 
vagabonds  who  had  more  faith  in  the  coin  than  in 
the  touch  bestowed  upon  them.  The  majority,  how- 
ever, it  cannot  be  doubted,  were  as  sincere  victims 
of  delusion  as  those  who,  at  the  close  of  the  last  cen- 
tury, believed  in  the  efficacy  of  metallic  tractors,  and 
those  who  now  unconsciously  expose  their  intellectual 
infirmity  as  advocates  of  electro-biology  and  spirit- 
rapping.  The  populace,  as  a  body,  unhesitatingly 
believed  that  their  sovereigns  possessed  this  faculty 
as  the  anointed  of  the  Lord.  A  story  is  told  of  a 
Papist,  who,  much  to  his  astonishment,  was  cured  of 
the  king's  evil  by  Elizabeth,  after  her  final  rupture 
with  the  court  of  Rome. 

"Now  I  perceive,"  cried  the  man,  "by  plain  ex- 
perience that  the  excommunication  against  the  Queen 
is  of  no  effect,  since  God  hath  blessed  her  with  such  a 
gift." 

Nor  would  it  be  wise  to  suppose  that  none  were 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  263 

benefited  by  the  treatment.  The  eagerness  with  which 
the  vulgar  crowd  to  a  sight,  and  the  intense  excite- 
ment with  which  London  mobs  witness  a  royal  proces- 
sion to  the  houses  of  Parliament,  or  a  Lord  Mayor's 
pageant  on  its  way  from  the  City  to  Westminster, 
may  afford  us  some  idea  of  the  inspiriting  sensations 
experienced  by  a  troop  of  wretches  taken  from  their 
kennels  to  Whitehall,  and  brought  into  personal  con- 
tact with  their  sovereign— their  ideal  of  grandeur! 
Such  a  trip  was  a  stimulus  to  the  nervous  system, 
compared  with  which  the  shock  of  a  galvanic  battery 
would  have  been  but  the  tickling  of  a  feather.  And, 
over  and  above  this,  was  the  influence  of  imagination, 
which  in  many  ways  may  become  an  agent  for  re- 
storing the  tone  of  the  nervous  system,  and  so  en- 
abling Nature  to  overcome  the  obstacles  of  her  healthy 
action. 

Montaigne  admirably  treated  this  subject  in  his 
essay,  "Of  the  Force  of  Imagination";  and  his  an- 
ecdote of  the  happy  results  derived  by  an  unfortunate 
nobleman  from  the  use  of  a  flat  gold  plate,  graven 
with  celestial  figures,  must  have  occurred  to  many  of 
his  readers  who  have  witnessed  tlie  beneficial  effects 
which  are  frequently  produced  by  the  practices  of 
quackery. 

''These  apes'  tricks,"  says  Montaigne,  "are  the 
main  cause  of  the  effect,  our  fancy  being  so  far  se- 
duced as  to  believe  that  such  strange  and  uncouth  for- 
malities must  of  necessity  proceed  from  some  abstruse 
science.  Their  very  inanity  gives  them  reverence  and 
weight. ' ' 

And  old  Burton,  touching,  in  his  "Anatomy  of  Mel- 


264  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

ancholy,"  on  the  power  of  imagination,  says, 
quaintly  :— 

"How  can  otherwise  blear  eyes  in  one  man  cause 
the  like  affection  in  another?  Why  doth  one  man's 
ya^raing  make  another  man  yawn  ?  "\Miy  do  witches 
and  old  women  fascinate  and  bewitch  children;  but, 
as  Wierus,  Paracelsus,  Cardan,  Migaldus,  Valleriola, 
Caesar  Vanninus,  Campanella,  and  many  philosophers 
think,  the  forcible  imagination  of  one  party  moves 
and  alters  the  spirits  of  the  other.  Nay  more,  they 
cause  and  cure,  not  only  diseases,  maladies,  and  sev- 
eral infirmities  by  this  means,  as  'Avicenna  de  Anim. 
1.  4,  sect.  4,'  supposeth  in  parties  remote,  but  move 
bodies  from  their  places,  cause  thunder,  lightning, 
tempests;  which  opinion  Alkindus,  Paracelsus,  and 
some  others  approve  of. ' ' 

In  this  passage  Burton  touches  not  only  on  the  ef- 
fects of  the  imagination,  but  also  on  the  impression 
which  the  nervous  energy  of  one  person  may  create 
upon  the  nervous  sensibility  of  another.  That  such 
an  impression  can  be  produced,  no  one  can  question 
who  observes  the  conduct  of  men  in  their  ordinary 
relations  to  each  other.  By  whatever  term  we  christen 
it — endeavouring  to  define  either  the  cause  or  its  ef- 
fect—we all  concur  in  admitting  that  decision  of  char- 
acter, earnestness  of  manner,  enthusiasm,  a  com- 
manding aspect,  a  piercing  eye,  or  a  strong  will,  exer- 
cise a  manifest  control  over  common  natures,  whether 
they  be  acting  separately  or  in  masses. 

Of  the  men  who,  without  learning,  or  an  ennobling 
passion  for  truth,  or  a  high  purpose  of  any  kind, 
have,  unaided  by  physical  force,  commanded  the  at- 
tention and  directed  the  actions  of  large  numbers  of 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  265 

their  fellow  creatures,  Mesmer  is  perEaps  the  most 
remarkable  in  modern  history.  But  we  will  not  speak 
of  him  till  we  have  paid  a  few  minutes'  attention  to 
one  of  his  predecessors. 

The  most  notable  forerunner  of  Mesmer  in  this 
country  was  Valentine  Greatrakes,  who,  in  Charles 
the  Second's  reign,  performed  "severall  marvaillous 
cures  by  the  stroaking  of  the  hands."  He  was  a  gen- 
tleman of  condition,  and,  at  first,  the  dupe  of  his  own 
imagination  rather  than  a  deliberate  charlatan.  He 
was  born  on  the  14th  of  February,  1628,  on  his 
father's  estate  of  Affane,  in  the  County  of  Waterford, 
and  was,  on  both  sides,  of  more  than  merely  respect- 
able extraction,  his  father  being  a  gentleman  of  good 
repute  and  property,  and  his  mother  being  a  daughter 
of  Sir  Edward  Harris,  Knt,  a  Justice  of  the  King's 
Bench  in  Ireland.  The  first  years  of  his  school-life 
were  passed  in  the  once  famous  Academy  of  Lismore ; 
but  when  he  had  arrived  at  thirteen  years  of  age  his 
mother  (who  had  become  a  widow),  on  the  outbreak 
of  the  rebellion,  fled  with  him  and  his  little  brothers 
and  sisters  to  England,  where  the  fugitive  family 
were  hospitably  entertained  by  Mr.  Edmund  Harris, 
a  gentleman  of  considerable  property,  and  one  of  the 
justice's  sons.  After  concluding  his  education  in  the 
family  of  one  John  Daniel  Getseus,  a  High-German 
minister  of  Stock  Gabriel,  in  the  County  of  Devon, 
Valentine  returned  to  Ireland,  then  distracted  with 
tumult  and  armed  rebellion ;  and,  by  prudently  join- 
ing the  victorious  side,  re-entered  on  the  possession  of 
his  father's  estate  of  Affane.  He  served  for  six  years 
in  Cromwell's  forces  (from  1650  to  1656)  as  a  lieu- 
tenant of  the  Munster  Cavalrv,  under  the  command 


266  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

of  the  Earl  of  Orrery.  Valentine's  commission  was 
in  the  carl's  regiment;  and,  from  the  time  of  entering 
the  army  till  the  close  of  his  career  is  lost  sight  of,  he 
seems  to  have  enjoyed  the  patronage  and  friendship 
of  that  nobleman's  family. 

When  the  Munster  horse  was  disbanded  in  1656, 
"Valentine  retired  to  Affane,  and  for  a  period  occupied 
himself  as  an  active  and  influential  country  gentle- 
man. He  was  made  Clerk  of  the  Peace  for  the  County 
of  Cork,  a  Register  for  Transplantation,  and  a  Justice 
of  the  Peace.  In  the  performance  of  the  onerous 
duties  which,  in  the  then  disturbed  state  of  Ireland, 
these  offices  brought  upon  him,  he  gained  deserved 
popularity  and  universal  esteem.  He  was  a  frank 
and  commanding  personage,  of  pleasant  manners,  gal- 
lant bearing,  fine  figure,  and  singularly  handsome 
face.  With  a  hearty  and  musical  voice,  and  a  national 
stock  of  high  animal  spirits,  he  was  the  delight  of  all 
festive  assemblies,  taking  his  pleasure  freely,  but 
never  to  excess.  Indeed,  Valentine  was  a  devout  man, 
not  ashamed,  in  his  own  household,  and  in  his  bearing 
to  the  outer  world,  to  avow  that  it  was  his  intention  to 
serve  the  Lord.  But,  though  he  had  all  the  purity  of 
Puritanism,  there  was  in  him  no  taint  of  sectarian 
rancour  or  uncharitableness.  When  an  anonymous 
writer  aspersed  his  reputation,  he  responded— and  no 
one  could  gainsay  his  words— with  regard  to  his  pub- 
lic career:— "I  studied  so  to  acquit  myself  before  God 
and  man  in  singleness  and  integrity  of  heart,  that,  to 
the  comfort  of  my  soul,  and  praise  of  God  that 
directed  me,  I  can  with  confidence  say  I  never  took 
bribe  nor  reward  from  any  man,  though  I  had  many 
and  great  ones  before  me  (when  I  was  Register  for 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  267 

Transplantation) ;  nor  did  I  ever  connive  at  or  suffer 
a  malefactor  to  go  unpunished,  if  the  person  were 
guilty  of  any  notorious  crime  (when  I  had  power), 
nor  did  I  ever  take  the  fee  belonging  to  my  office,  if  I 
found  the  person  were  injured,  or  in  want ;  nor  did  I 
ever  commit  any  one  for  his  judgment  and  conscience 
barely,  so  it  led  him  not  to  do  anything  to  the  disturb- 
ance of  the  civil  peace  of  the  nation ;  nor  did  I  take 
anything  for  my  fee  when  he  was  discharged— for  I 
bless  God  he  has  taken  away  a  persecuting  spirit  from 
me,  who  would  persuade  all  men  to  be  Protestants, 
those  principles  being  most  consonant  to  Truth  and 
the  Word  of  God,  in  my  judgment,  and  that  profes- 
sion which  I  have  ever  been  of,  and  still  am.  .  .  . 
Yet  (though  there  were  orders  from  the  power  that 
then  was,  to  all  Justices  of  the  Peace,  for  Transplant- 
ing aU  Papists  that  would  not  go  to  church),  I  never 
molested  any  one  that  was  known  or  esteemed  to  be 
innocent,  but  suffered  them  to  continue  in  the  English 
quarters,  and  that  without  prejudice.  So  that  I  can 
truly  say,  I  never  injured  any  man  for  his  conscience, 
conceiving  that  ought  to  be  informed  and  not  en- 
forced. ' ' 

On  the  Restoration,  Valentine  Greatrakes  lost  his 
offices,  and  was  reduced  to  the  position  of  a  mere  pri- 
vate gentleman.  His  estate  at  Affane  was  a  small  one; 
but  he  laboured  on  it  with  good  results,  introducing 
into  his  neighbourhood  a  more  scientific  system  of 
agriculture  than  had  previously  been  known  there, 
and  giving  an  unprecedented  quantity  of  employment 
to  the  poor.  Perhaps  he  missed  the  excitement  of 
public  business,  and  his  energies,  deprived  of  the  vent 
they  had  for  many  years  enjoyed,  preyed  upon  his 


268  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

sensitive  nature.  Anyhow,  he  became  the  victim  of 
his  imagination,  which,  acting  on  a  mind  that  had 
been  educated  in  a  school  of  spiritual  earnestness  and 
superstitious  introspection,  led  him  into  a  series  ol 
remarkable  hallucinations.  He  first  had  fits  of  pen- 
siveness  and  dejection,  similar  to  those  which  tor- 
mented Cromwell  ere  his  genius  found  for  itself  a 
more  fit  field  of  display  than  the  management  of  a 
brewery  and  a  few  acres  of  marsh-land.  Ere  long  he 
had  an  impulse,  or  a  strange  persuasion  in  his  own 
mind  (of  which  he  was  not  able  to  give  any  rational 
account  to  another),  which  did  very  frequently  sug- 
gest to  him  that  there  was  bestowed  on  him  the  gift  of 
curing  the  King's  Evil,  which  for  the  extraordinari- 
ness  of  it,  he  thought  fit  to  conceal  for  some  time,  but, 
at  length  communicated  to  his  wife,  and  told  her, 
"That  he  did  verily  believe  that  God  had  given  him 
the  blessing  of  curing  the  King's  Evil;  for,  whether 
he  were  in  private  or  publiek,  sleeping  or  waking,  still 
he  had  the  same  impulse;  but  her  reply  was  to  him, 
that  she  conceived  this  was  a  strange  imagination." 
Such  is  his  statement. 

Patients  either  afflicted  with  King's  Evil,  or  pre- 
sumed to  be  so,  were  in  due  course  brought  before  him ; 
and,  on  his  touching  them,  they  recovered.  It  may  be 
here  remarked  that  in  the  days  when  the  Royal  Touch 
was  believed  in  as  a  cure  for  scrofula,  the  distinctions 
between  strumous  and  other  swellings  were  by  no 
means  ascertained  even  by  physicians  of  repute ;  and 
numbers  of  those  who  underwent  the  manipulation  of 
Anointed  Rulers  were  suffering  only  from  aggravated 
boils  and  common  festering  sores,  from  which,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  nature  would  in  the  space  of  a  few 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  269 

weeks  have  relieved  them.    Doubtless  many  of  Valen- 
tine's patients  were  suffering,  not  under  scrofulous 
affections,  but  comparatively  innocent  tumours;  for 
his  cures  were   rapid,  complete,  and  numerous.     A 
second  impulse  gave  him  the  power  of  curing  ague; 
and  a  third  inspiration  of  celestial  aura  imparted  to 
him    command,    under    certain    conditions,    over   all 
human  diseases.     His  modes  of  operation  were  var- 
ious.   When  an  afiflicted  person  was  laid  before  him, 
he  usually  offered  up  a  prayer  to  God  to  help  him,  to 
make  him  the  humble  instrument  of  divine  mercy. 
And  invariably  when  a  patient  derived  benefit  from 
his  treatment,  he  exhorted  him  to  offer  up  his  thanks 
to  his  Heavenly  Father.    After  the  initiatory  suppli- 
cation the  operator  passed  his  hands  over  the  affected 
part  of  the  sick  person's  body,  sometimes  over  the 
skin  itself  and  sometimes  over  the  clothes.    The  man- 
ipulations varied  in  muscular  force  from  delicate  tick- 
ling to  violent  rubbing,  according  to  the  nature  of  the 
evil  spirits  by  which  the  diseased  people  were  tor- 
mented.   Greatrakes  's  theory  of  disease  was  the  scrip- 
tural one :  the  morbific  power  was  a  devil,  which  had 
to  be  expelled  from  the  frame  in  which  it  had  taken 
shelter.    Sometimes  the  demon  was  exorcised  by  a  few 
gentle  passes;  occasionally  it  fled  at  the  verbal  com- 
mand of  the  physician,  or  retreated  on  being  gazed  at 
through  the  eyes  of  the  mortal  it  tormented ;  but  fre- 
quently the    victory  was  not  gained  till  the  healer 
rubbed  himself — like  the  rubber  who  in  our  own  day 
makes  such  a  large  income  at  Brighton— into  a  red 
face  and  a  copious  perspiration.     Henry  Stubbe,  a 
famous   physician   in    Stratford-upon-Avon,   in   his 


::7U  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

"Miraculous  Conformist,"  published  in  1666,  gives 
the  following  testimony:— 

^^ Proofs  that  lie  revives  the  Ferment  of  the  Blood. 
—Mr  Bromley's  brother,  of  Upton  upon  Severne, 
after  a  long  quartane  Ague,  had  by  a  Metastasis  of 
the  Disease  such  a  ehilnesse  in  the  habit  of  the  body, 
that  no  clothes  could  possibly  warme  him;  he  wore 
upon  his  head  many  spiced  caps,  and  tenne  pounds 
weight  of  linen  on  his  head.  Mr  Greatarick  stripped 
him,  and  rubbed  him  all  over,  and  immediately  he 
sweat,  and  was  hot  all  over,  so  that  the  bath  never 
heated  up  as  did  the  hand  of  Mr  Greatarick's;  this 
was  his  own  expression.  But  Mr  Greatarick  causing 
him  to  cast  off  all  that  multitude  of  caps  and  cloaths, 
it  was  supposed  that  it  frustrated  the  happy  effect, 
for  he  felt  the  recourse  of  his  disease  in  some  parts 
rendered  the  cure  suspicious.  But  as  often  as  Mr 
Greatarick  came  and  rubbed  him  he  would  be  all 
in  a  flame  againe  for  half-an-hour :  the  experiment 
whereof  was  frequently  practised  for  five  or  six  dayes 
atRagly." 

Greatrakes  himself  also  speaks  of  his  more  violent 
curative  exertions  making  him  very  hot.  But  it  was 
only  occasionally  that  he  had  to  labour  so  vehemently. 
His  eye,  the  glance  of  which  had  a  fascinating  effect 
on  people  of  a  nervous  organization,  and  his  fantastic 
ticklings,  usually  produced  all  the  results  required  by 
his  mode  of  treatment. 

The  fame  of  the  healer  spread  far  and  wide.  Not 
only  from  the  most  secluded  parts  of  Ireland,  but 
from  civilized  England,  the  lame  and  blind,  the  deaf, 
dumb,  and  diseased,  made  pilgrimages  to  the  Squire 
of  Affane.     His  stable,  barn,  and  malt-house  were 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  271 

crowded  with  wretches  imploring  his  aid.  The  de- 
mands upon  his  time  were  so  very  many  and  great, 
that  he  set  apart  three  days  in  the  week  for  the  recep- 
tion of  patients;  and  on  those  days,  from  six  in  the 
morning  till  six  in  the  evening,  he  ministered  to  his 
wretched  clients.  He  took  no  fee  but  gratitude  on  the. 
part  of  those  he  benefited,  and  a  cheering  sense  that 
he  was  fulfilling  the  commands  of  the  founder  of  his 
religion.  The  Dean  of  Lismoi'e  cited  him  to  appear 
before  the  ecclesiastical  court,  and  render  an  account 
of  his  proceedings.  He  went,  and  on  being  asked  if 
he  had  worked  any  cures,  replied  to  the  court  that 
they  might  come  to  his  house  and  see.  The  judge 
asked  if  he  had  a  licence  to  practise  from  the  ordinary 
of  the  diocese ;  and  he  replied  that  he  knew  of  no  law 
which  prohibited  any  man  from  doing  what  good  he 
could  to  others.  He  was,  however,  commanded  by  the 
court  not  to  lay  his  hands  again  on  the  sick,  until  he 
had  obtained  the  Ordinary's  licence  to  do  so.  He 
obeyed  for  two  days  only,  and  went  on  again  more 
earnestly  than  ever. 

Let  a  charlatan  or  an  enthusiast  spread  his  sails, 
the  breeze  of  fashion  is  always  present,  and  ready  to 
swell  them.  The  Earl  of  Orrery  took  his  quondam 
lieutenant  by  the  hand,  and  persuaded  him  to  go  over 
to  England  to  cure  the  Viscountess  Conway  of  a  vio- 
lent headache,  which,  in  spite  of  the  ablest  physicians 
of  England  and  France,  she  had  suffered  from  for 
many  years.  Lord  Conway  sent  him  an  urgent  invi- 
tation to  do  so.  He  complied,  and  made  his  way  to 
Rugby,  in  Warwickshire,  where  he  was  unable  to  give 
relief  to  his  hostess,  but  was  hospitably  entertained 
for  a  month.    His  inability  to  benefit  Lady  Conway 


272  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

did  not  injure  his  reputation,  for  he  did  not  profess  to 
be  able  to  cure  every  one.  An  adverse  influence— 
such  as  the  sins  of  a  patient,  or  his  want  of  faith- 
was  enough  to  counteract  the  healing  power.  In  the 
jargon  of  modern  mesmerism,  which  practically  was 
only  a  revival  of  Greatrakes's  extravagances,  the  phy- 
sician could  affect  only  those  who  were  susceptible. 
But  though  Lady  Conway  was  beyond  the  reach  of  his 
mysterious  agency,  the  reverse  was  the  case  with 
others.  The  gentry  and  commonalty  of  Warwickshire 
crowded  by  thousands  to  him ;  and  he  touched,  prayed 
over,  and  blessed  them,  and  sent  them  away  rejoicing. 
From  Rugby  he  went  to  Worcester,  at  the  request  of 
the  Lord  Mayor  and  Aldermen  of  that  city ;  and  f ron\ 
Worcester  he  was  carried  up  to  London.  Lord  Ar- 
lington commanded  him  to  appear  at  Whitehall,  and 
mumble  in  his  particular  fashion  for  the  amusement 
of  Charles  II.  A  man  who  could  cure  gout  by  a  touch 
would  have  been  an  acquisition  to  such  a  court  as  then 
presided  over  English  manners. 

In  London  he  immediately  became  a  star.  The 
fashion  of  the  West,  and  the  wary  opulence  of  the 
East,  laid  their  offerings  at  his  feet.  For  a  time  he 
ruled  from  Soho  to  Wapping.  Mr.  Justice  Godfrey 
gave  him  rooms  for  the  reception  of  patients  in  his 
mansion  in  Lincoln 's-inn-Fields;  and  thither  flocked 
the  mob  of  the  indigent  and  the  mob  of  the  wealthy 
to  pay  him  homage.  Mr.  Boyle  (the  brother  of  the 
Earl  of  Orrery),  Sir  William  Smith,  Dr.  Denton,  Dr. 
Fairclough,  Dr.  Faber,  Sir  Nathaniel  Hobart,  Sir 
John  Godolphin,  Dr.  Wilkins,  Dr.  Whichcot,  and  Dr. 
Cudworth,  were  amongst  his  most  vehement  support- 
ers of  the  sterner  sex.    But  the  majority  of  his  ad- 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  273 

mirers  were  ladies.  The  Countess  of  Devonshire  en- 
tertained him  in  her  palace;  and  Lady  Ranelagh  fre- 
quently amused  the  guests  at  her  routs  with  Mr.  Val- 
entine Greatrakes,  who,  in  the  character  of  the  lion 
of  the  season,  performed  with  wondrous  results  on 
the  prettiest  or  most  hysterical  of  the  ladies  present. 
It  was  held  as  certain  by  his  intimate  friends  that  the 
curative  property  that  came  from  him  was  a  subtle 
aura,  effulgent,  and  of  an  exquisitely  sweet  smell,  that 
could  only  be  termed  the  divine  breath.  "God,"  sayf 
Dr.  Henry  Stubbe,  "had  bestowed  upon  Mr.  Greate- 
rick  a  peculiar  temperament,  or  composed  his  body  of 
some  particular  ferments,  the  effluvia  whereof,  being 
introduced  sometimes  by  a  light,  sometimes  by  a  vio- 
lent friction,  should  restore  the  temperament  of  the 
debilitated  parts,  re-invigorate  the  blood,  and  dissi- 
pate all  heterogeneous  ferments  out  of  the  bodies  of 
the  diseased  by  the  eyes,  nose,  mouth,  hands,  and  feet. 
I  place  the  gift  of  healing  in  the  temperament  or  com- 
posure of  his  body,  because  I  see  it  is  necessary  that 
he  touch  them.  Besides,  the  Right  Honourable  the 
Lord  Conway  observed  one  morning,  as  he  came  into 
his  Lordship's  chamber,  a  smell  strangely  pleasant, 
as  if  it  had  been  of  sundry  flowers ;  and  demanding  of 
his  man  what  sweet  water  he  had  brought  into  the 
room,  he  answered.  None;  whereupon  his  Lordship 
smelled  upon  the  hand  of  Mr.  Greaterick,  and  found 
the  fragrancy  to  issue  thence;  and  examining  his 
bosom,  he  found  the  like  scent  there  also."  Dean 
Rust  gave  similar  testimony;  and  "Sir  Amos  Mere- 
dith, who  had  been  Mr.  Greaterick 's  bed-fellow,"  did 
the  like. 
Amongst  the  certificates  of  cures  performed,  which 

4—18 


274  A   BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

Greatrakes  published,  are  two  to  which  the  name  of 
Andrew  Marvell  is  affixed,  as  a  spectator  of  the  strok- 
ing.   One  of  them  is  the  following:— 

"Mr  Nicholson's  Certificate. 
"I,  Anthony  Nicholson,  of  Cambridge,  Bookseller, 
have  been  affected  sore  with  pains  all  over  my  body, 
for  three-and-twenty  years  last  past,  have  had  advice 
and  best  directions  of  all  the  doctors  there ;  have  been 
at  the  bath  in  Somersetshire,  and  been  at  above  one 
hundred  pounds  expense  to  procure  ease,  or  a  cure  of 
these  pains ;  and  have  found  all  the  means  I  could  be 
advised  or  directed  to  ineffectual  for  either,  till,  by 
the  advice  of  Dr  Benjamin  Whichcot  and  Dean  Rust, 

I  applyed  myself  to  Mr  Greatrake's  for  help  upon 
Saturday  was  sevenight,  being  the  latter  end  of 
March,  and  who  then  stroked  me ;  upon  which  I  was 
very  much  worse,  and  enforced  to  keep  my  bed  for 
five  or  six  days ;  but  then  being  stroked  twice  since, 
by  the  blessing  of  God  upon  Mr  Greatrake's  endeav- 
ours, I  am  perfectly  eas'd  of  all  pains,  and  very 
healthy  and  strong,  insomuch  as  I  intend  (God  will- 
ing) to  return  home  towards  Cambridge  to-morrow 
morning,  though  I  was  so  weak  as  to  be  necessitated  to 
be  brought  up  in  men's  arms,  on  Saturday  last  about 

II  of  the  clock,  to  Mr  Greatrake's.  Attested  by  me 
this  tenth  day  of  April,  1666.  I  had  also  an  hard 
swelling  in  my  left  arm,  whereby  I  was  disabled  from 
using  it ;  which  being  taken  out  by  the  said  Mr  Great- 
rake 's,  I  am  perfectly  freed  of  all  pain,  and  the  use 
thereof  greatly  restored. 

"Anthony  Nicholson. 
"In  the  presence  of  Andrew  Marvell,  Jas.  Fair- 
clough,  Tho.  Alured,  Tho.  Pooley,  W.  Popple." 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  275 

There  were  worse  features  of  life  in  Charles  the 
Second's  London  than  the  popularity  of  Valentine 
Greatrakes;  but  his  triumph  was  of  short  duration. 
His  professions  were  made  the  butts  of  ridicule,  to 
which  his  presence  of  mind  and  volubility  were  unable 
to  respond  with  effect.  It  was  asserted  by  his  ene- 
mies that  his  system  was  only  a  cloak  under  which  he 
ofifended  the  delicacy  of  virtuous  women,  and  roused 
the  passfions  of  the  unchaste.  His  tone  of  conversa- 
tion was  represented  as  compounded  of  the  blasphemy 
of  the  religious  enthusiast  and  the  blasphemy  of  the 
profligate.  His  boast  that  he  never  received  a  fee  for 
his  remedial  services  was  met  by  flat  contradiction, 
and  a  statement  that  he  received  presents  to  the 
amount  of  £100  at  a  time  from  a  single  individual. 
This  last  accusation  was  never  clearly  disposed  of; 
but  it  is  probable  that  the  reward  he  sought  (if  he 
looked  for  any)  was  restoration,  through  Court  in- 
fluence, to  the  commission  of  magistrates  for  his 
county,  and  the  lost  clerkship  of  the  peace.  The  tide 
of  slander  was  anyhow  too  strong  for  him,  and  he  re- 
tired to  his  native  country  a  less  honoured  though 
perhaps  a  not  less  honest  man  than  he  left  it.  Of  his 
sincerity  at  the  outset  of  his  career  as  a  healer  there 
can  be  little  doubt. 

Valentine  Greatrakes  did  unconsciously  what  many 
years  after  him  Mesmer  did  by  design.  He  in  his  re- 
markable career  illustrated  the  power  which  a  de- 
termined man  may  exercise  over  the  will  and  nervous 
life  of  another. 

As  soon  as  the  singular  properties  of  the  loadstone 
were  discovered,  they  were  presumed  to  have  a  strong 
medicinal  effect ;  and  in  this  belief  physicians  for  cen- 


276  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

turies— and  indeed  almost  down  to  present  times- 
were  in  the  habit  of  administering  pulverized  magnet 
in  salves,  plaisters,  pills,  and  potions.  It  was  not  till 
the  year  1660  that  it  was  for  the  first  time  distinctly 
recorded  in  the  archives  of  science,  by  Dr.  Gilbert,  of 
Colchester,  that  in  a  state  of  pulverization  the  load- 
stone no  longer  possessed  any  magnetic  powers.  But 
it  was  not  till  some  generations  after  this  that  medical 
practitioners  universally  recognized  the  fact  that 
powder  of  magnet,  externally  or  internally  adminis- 
tered, was  capable  of  producing  no  other  results  than 
the  presence  of  any  ordinary  ferruginous  substance 
would  account  for.  But  long  after  this  error  had 
been  driven  from  the  domains  of  science,  an  unrea- 
sonable belief  in  the  power  of  magnets  applied  ex- 
ternally to  the  body  held  its  ground.  In  1779-80,  the 
Royal  Society  of  j\Iedicine  in  Paris  made  numerous 
experiments  with  a  view  to  arrive  at  a  just  apprecia- 
tion of  the  influence  of  magnets  on  the  human  system, 
and  came  to  the  conclusion  that  they  were  medicinal 
agents  of  no  ordinary  efScacy. 

Such  was  the  state  of  medical  opinion  at  the  close 
of  the  last  century,  when  Perkins's  tractors,  which 
were  supposed  to  act  magnetically,  became  the  fash- 
ion. Mr.  Perkins  was  a  citizen  of  Connecticut,  and 
certainly  his  celebrated  invention  was  worthy  of  the 
'cutest  people  on  the  'varsal  earth.  Barnum's 
swindles  were  modest  ventures  by  comparison.  The 
entire  world,  old  and  new,  went  tractor-mad.  Every 
valetudinarian  bought  the  painted  nails,  composed  of 
an  alloy  of  various  metals  (which  none  but  Perkins 
could  make,  and  none  but  Perkins  sell),  and  tickled 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  277 

with  their  sharp  ends  those  parts  of  his  frame  which 
were  regarded  as  eenti-es  of  disease. 

The  phenomena  apparently  produced  by  these  in- 
struments were  astounding,  and  misled  every  observer 
of  them;  until  Dr.  Haygarth  of  Bath  proved  by  a 
process  to  which  objections  was  impossible,  that  they 
were  referable  not  to  metal  points,  but  to  the  mental 
condition  of  those  who  used  them.  "Robert  Thomas," 
says  Dr.  Haygarth  in  his  interesting  work,  "aged 
forty-three,  who  had  been  for  some  time  under  the 
care  of  Dr.  Lovell,  in  the  Bristol  Infirmary,  with  a 
rheumatic  affection  of  the  shoulder,  which  rendered 
his  arm  perfectly  useless,  was  pointed  out  as  a  proper 
object  of  trial  by  Sir.  J.  AY.  Dyer,  apothecary  to  the 
house.  Tuesday,  April  19th,  having  everything  in 
readiness,  I  passed  through  the  ward,  and,  in  a  way 
that  he  might  suspect  nothing,  questioned  him  re- 
specting his  complaint.  I  then  told  him  that  I  had 
an  instrument  in  my  pocket  which  had  been  very 
serviceable  to  many  in  his  state;  and  when  I  had 
explained  to  him  how  simple  it  was,  he  consented  to 
undergo  the  operation.  In  six  minutes  no  other  effect 
was  produced  than  a  warmth  upon  the  skin,  and  I 
feared  that  this  coup  d'essai  had  failed.  The  next 
day,  however,  he  told  me  that  'he  had  received  so 
much  benefit  that  it  had  enabled  him  to  lift  his  hand 
from  his  knee,  which  he  had  in  vain  several  times  at- 
tempted on  Monday  evening,  as  the  whole  ward  wat- 
nessed.'  The  tractors  I  used  being  made  of  lead,  I 
thought  it  advisable  to  lay  them  aside,  lest,  being 
metallic  points,  the  proof  against  the  fraud  might  be 
less  complete.  Thus  much,  however,  was  proved,  that 
the  patent  tractors  possessed  no  specific  power  inde- 


278  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

pendent  of  simple  metals.  Two  pieces  of  wood, 
properly  shaped  and  painted,  were  next  made  use  of ; 
and  in  order  to  add  solemnity  to  the  farce,  Mr.  Barton 
held  in  his  hand  a  stop-watch,  whilst  Mr.  Lax  minuted 
the  effects  produced.  In  four  minutes  the  man  raised 
his  hand  several  inches ;  and  he  had  lost  also  the  pain 
in  his  shoulder,  usually  experienced  when  attempting 
to  lift  anything.  He  continued  to  undergo  the  opera- 
tion daily,  and  with  progressive  good  effect;  for  on 
the  twenty-fifth  he  could  touch  the  mantel-piece.  On 
the  twenty-seventh,  in  the  presence  of  Dr.  Lovell  and 
Mr.  J.  P.  Noble,  two  common  iron  nails,  disguised 
with  sealing-wax,  were  substituted  for  the  pieces  of 
mahogany  before  used.  In  three  minutes  he  felt 
something  moving  from  his  arm  to  his  hand,  and  soon 
after  he  touched  the  board  of  rules  which  hung  a  foot 
above  the  fire-place.  This  patient  at  length  so  far 
recovered  that  he  could  carry  coals  and  use  his  arm 
sufficiently  to  help  the  nurse;  yet,  previous  to  the 
use  of  the  spurious  tractors,  he  could  no  more  lift 
his  hand  from  his  knee  than  if  a  hundredweight  were 
upon  it,  or  a  nail  driven  through  it— as  he  declared  in 
the  presence  of  several  gentlemen,  whose  names  I 
shall  have  frequent  occasion  to  mention.  The  fame 
of  this  case  brought  applications  in  abundance;  in- 
deed, it  must  be  confessed  that  it  was  more  than  suffi- 
cient to  act  upon  weak  minds,  and  induce  a  belief  that 
these  pieces  of  wood  and  iron  were  endowed  with  some 
peculiar  virtues." 

The  result  of  Dr.  Haygarth's  experiments  was  the 
overthrow  of  Perkins,  and  the  enlightenment  of  the 
public  as  to  the  real  worth  of  the  celebrated  metallic 
tractors.     In    achieving    this   the    worthy    physician 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  279 

added  some  interesting  facts  to  the  science  of  psy- 
chology. But  of  course  his  influence  upon  the 
ignorant  and  foolish  persons  he  illuminated  was  only 
transient.  Ere  a  few  short  years  or  even  months  were 
over,  they  had  embraced  another  delusion— not  less 
ridiculous,  but  more  pernicious. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

IMAGINATION  AND  NERVOUS  EXCITEMENT.      MESMER. 

At  a  very  early  date  the  effects  of  magnetic  inflU' 
ences,  and  the  ordinary  phenomena  of  nervous  excite- 
ment, were  the  source  of  much  confusion  and  perplex- 
ity to  medical  speculators,  who,  with  an  unsound 
logic  that  is  perhaps  more  frequent  than  any  other 
form  of  bad  reasoning,  accounted  for  what  they  could 
not  understand  by  pointing  to  what  they  were  only 
imperfectly  acqiiainted  with.  The  power  of  the  load- 
stone was  a  mystery;  the  nervous  phenomena  pro- 
duced by  a  strong  will  over  a  weak  one  were  a  mys- 
tery:— clearly  the  mysterious  phenomena  were  to  be 
attributed  to  the  mysterious  power.  In  its  outset  ani- 
mal magnetism  committed  no  other  error  than  this. 
Its  wilder  extravagances  were  all  subsequent  to  this 
assumption,  that  two  sets  of  phenomena,  which  it  has 
never  yet  been  proved  are  nearly  allied,  were  con- 
nected, the  one  with  the  other,  in  the  relation  of  cause 
and  effect,  or  as  being  the  offspring  of  one  immediate 
and  common  caiise. 

To  support  this  theory,  Mesmerism  called  into  its 
service  the  old  astrological  views  regarding  planetary 
influence.    But  it  held  also  that  the  subtle  fluid,  so 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  281 

transmitted  to  the  animal  life  of  our  planet,  was  cap- 
able of  being  passed  on  in  greater  or  less  volumes  of 
quantity  and  intensity.  Nervous  energy  was  only 
that  subtle  fluid  which  was  continually  passing  and 
repassing  in  impalpable  currents  between  the  earth 
and  the  celestial  bodies;  and  when,  by  reason  of  the 
nervous  energy  within  him,  any  one  exercised  control 
over  another,  he  was  deemed  only  to  have  infused 
him  with  some  of  his  own  stock  of  spiritual  aura. 
Here  was  a  new  statement  of  the  old  dream  which  had 
charmed  the  poets  and  philosophers  of  buried  centur- 
ies; and  as  it  was  a  view  which  did  not  admit  of  posi- 
tive disproof,  it  was  believed  by  its  eicited  advocates 
to  be  proved. 

One  of  the  tirst  British  writers  on  animal  magnet- 
ism was  William  Maxwell,  a  Scotch  physician,  who 
enunciated  his  opinions  with  a  boldness  and  perspicac- 
ity which  do  him  much  credit.  The  first  four  of  his 
twelve  conclusions  are  a  very  good  specimen  of  his 
work : — 

"Conclusio  1.— Anima  non  solum  in  corpore  pro- 
prio  visibili,  sed  etiam  extra  corpus  est,  nee  corpore 
organico  circumscribitur. 

^^ Conclusio  2.— Anima  extra  corpus  proprium,  com- 
muniter  sic  dictum,  operatur. 

"Conclusio  .3.  — Ab  omni  corpore  radii  corporales 
fluunt,  in  quibus  anima  sua  pnesentia,  operatur; 
bisque  energiam  et  potentiam  operandi  largitur.  Sunt 
vero  radii  hi  non  solum  corporales,  sed  et  diversarum 
partium. 

"Conclusic  4. — Radii  hi,  qui  ex  animalium  corpori- 
bus  emittuntur,  spiritu  vitali  gaudent,  per  quem 
animffi  mutationes  dispensantur. " 


282  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

The  sixty-fifth  of  the  aphorisms  with  which  Max- 
well concludes  his  book  is  an  amusing  one,  as  giving 
the  orthodox  animal-magnetic  view  of  that  condition 
of  the  affections  which  we  term  love,  and  also  as  il- 
lustrating ■  the  connection  between  astrology  and 
charms. 

"Aphorism  65.  — Imaginatione  vero  producitur 
amor,  quando  imaginatio  exaltata  unius  imaginationi 
alterius  dominatur,  eamque  fingit  sigillatque;  atque 
hoc  propter  miram  imaginationis  volubilitatem  vicis- 
sim  fieri  potest.  Hinc  incantationes  effectiim  nancis- 
cuntur,  licet  aliqualem  forsan  in  se  virtutem  possid- 
eant,  sine  imaginatione  tamen  haec  virtus  propter  uni- 
versalitatem  distribui  nequit." 

Long  before  animal  magnetism  was  a  stock  subject 
of  conversation  at  dinner-parties,  there  was  a  vague 
knowledge  of  its  pretensions  floating  about  society, 
and  a  curiosity  to  know  how  far  its  principles  were 
reconcilable  with  facts,  animated  men  of  science  and 
lovers  of  the  marvellous.  Had  not  this  been  the  state 
of  public  feeling,  the  sensations  created  by  Sir  Ken- 
elm  Digby's  sympathetic  cures,  Greatrake's  adminis- 
trations, Leverett's  manual  exercises,  and  Louther- 
bourg's  manipulations,  would  not  have  been  so  great 
and  universal. 

But  the  person  who  turned  the  credulity  of  the  pub- 
lic on  this  point  to  the  best  account  was  Frederick 
Anthony  Mesmer.  This  man  did  not  originate  a 
single  idea.  He  only  traded  on  the  old  day-dreams 
and  vagaries  of  departed  ages ;  and  yet  he  managed  to 
fix  his  name  upon  a  science  ( ?),  in  the  origination  or 
development  of  which  he  had  no  part  whatever ;  and, 
by  daring  charlatanry,  he  made  it  a  means  of  grasping 


A    BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTOBd.  283 

enormous  wealth.  Where  this  man  was  born  is  uncer- 
tain. Vienna,  Werseburg  in  Swabia,  and  Switzer- 
land, contend  for  the  honour  of  having  given  him  to 
the  world.  At  Vienna  he  took  his  M.D.  degree,  hav- 
ing given  an  inaugural  dissertation  on  "The  Influence 
of  the  Planets  upon  the  Human  Body."  His  course 
of  self-delusion  began  with  \ising  magnets  as  a  means 
of  cure,  when  applied  externally;  and  he  had  reso- 
lutely advanced  on  the  road  of  positive  knavery,  When, 
after  his  quarrel  with  his  old  instructor,  Maximilian 
Hel,  he  threw  aside  the  use  of  steel  magnets,  and  pro- 
duced, by  the  employment  of  his  fingers  and  eyes, 
greater  marvels  than  had  ever  followed  the  applica- 
tion of  the  loadstone  or  Perkins's  tractors.  As  his 
prosperity  and  reputation  increased,  so  did  his  audac- 
ity—which was  always  laughable,  when  it  did  not  dis- 
gust by  its  impiety. 

On  one  occasion.  Dr.  Egg  Von  Ellekon  asked  him 
why  he  ordered  his  patients  to  bathe  in  river,  and  not 
in  spring  water  1  ' '  Because, ' '  was  the  answer,  ' '  river 
water  is  exposed  to  the  sun's  rays."  "True,"  was 
the  reply,  "the  water  is  sometimes  warmed  by  the 
sun,  but  not  so  much  so  that  you  have  not  sometimes 
to  warm  it  still  more.  Why  then  should  not  spring 
water  be  preferable?"  Not  at  all  posed,  Mesmer  an- 
swered, with  charming  candour,  "Dear  doctor,  the 
cause  why  all  the  water  which  is  exposed  to  the  rays 
of  the  sun  is  superior  to  all  other  water  is  because  it 
is  magnetized.  I  myself  magnetized  the  sun  some 
twenty  years  ago." 

But  a  better  story  of  him  is  told  by  Madame  Cam- 
pan.  That  lady's  husband  was  attacked  with  pul- 
monary inflammation.     Mesmer   was  sent  for,   and 


284  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

found  himself  called  upon  to  stem  a  violent  malady, 
not  to  gull  the  frivolous  Parisians,  who  were  then 
raving  about  the  marvels  of  the  new  system.  He  felt 
his  patient's  pulse,  made  certain  inquiries,  and  then, 
turning  to  JIadame  Campan,  gravely  assured  her  that 
the  only  way  to  restore  her  husband  to  health  was  to 
lay  in  his  bed,  by  his  side  one  of  three  things— a 
young  woman  of  brown  complexion,  a  black  hen,  or  an 
old  bottle.  "Sir,"  replied  Madame  Campan,  "if  the 
choice  be  a  matter  of  indifference,  praj'  try  the  empty 
bottle."  The  bottle  was  tried,  but  Mons.  Campan 
grew  worse.  Madame  Campan  left  the  room,  alarmed 
and  anxious,  and,  during  her  absence,  Mesmer  bled 
and  blistered  his  patient.  This  latter  treatment  was 
more  efficacious.  But  imagine  Madame  Campan's 
astonishment,  when  on  her  husband's  recovery,  Mes- 
mer asked  for  and  obtained  from  him  a  written  cer- 
tificate that  he  had  been  cured  by  Mesmerism ! 

It  is  instructive  to  reflect  that  the  Paris  which  made 
for  a  short  day  Mesmer  its  idol,  was  not  far  distant 
from  the  Paris  of  the  Reign  of  Terror.  In  one  year 
the  man  received  400,000  francs  in  fees;  and  posi- 
tively the  French  government,  at  the  instigation  of 
Maurepas,  offered  him  an  annual  stipend  of  20,000 
francs,  together  with  an  additional  10,000  to  support 
an  establishment  for  patients  and  pupils,  if  he  would 
stay  in  France.  One  unpleasant  condition  was  at- 
tached to  this  offer:  he  was  required  to  allow  three 
nominees  of  the  Crown  to  watch  his  proceedings.  So 
inordinately  high  did  Mesmer  rate  his  claims,  that  he 
stood  out  for  better  terms,  and  like  the  dog  of  the 
fable,  by  endeavoring  to  get  too  much,  lost  what  he 
might  have  secured.    Ere  long  the  Parisians  recovered 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  285 

something  of  common  sense.  The  enthusiasm  of  the 
hour  subsided:  and  the  Royal  Commission,  composed 
of  some  of  the  best  men  of  science  to  be  found  in  the 
entire  world,  were  enabled  to  explain  to  the  public 
how  they  had  been  fooled  by  a  trickster,  and  betrayed 
into  practices  scarcely  less  offensive  to  modesty  than 
to  reason.  In  addition  to  the  public  report,  another 
private  one  was  issued  by  the  commissioners,  urging 
the  authorities,  in  the  name  of  morality,  to  put  a  stop 
to  the  mesmeric  mania. 

Mesmer  died  in  obscurity  on  the  5th  of  March,  in 
the  year  1815. 

Animal  magnetism,  under  the  name  of  mesmerism, 
has  been  made  familiar  of  late  years  to  the  ears  of 
English  people,  if  not  to  their  understandings,  by  the 
zealous  and  indiscreet  advocacy  which  its  absurdities 
have  met  with  in  London  and  our  other  great  cities. 
It  is  true  that  the  disciples  have  outrun  their  master 
—that  Jlesmer  has  been  out-mesmerized ;  but  the  same 
criticisms  which  have  been  here  made  on  the  system  of 
the  arch-charlatan  may  be  applied  to  the  vagaries  of 
his  successors,  whether  they  be  dupes  or  rogues.  To 
electro-biologists,  spirit-rappers,  and  table-turners  the 
same  arguments  must  be  used  as  we  employ  to  mes- 
merists. They  must  be  instructed  that  phenomena 
are  not  to  be  referred  to  magnetic  influence,  simply 
because  it  is  difficult  to  account  for  them;  that  it  is 
especially  foolish  to  set  them  down  to  such  a  cause, 
when  they  are  manifestly  the  product  of  another 
power ;  and  that  all  the  wonders  which  form  the  stock 
of  their  conversation,  and  fill  the  pages  of  the  Zoist, 
are  to  be  attributed,  not  to  a  lately  discovered  agency, 
but  to  nervous  susceptibility,  imagination,  and  bodily 


286  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

temperament,  aroused  by  certain  well-known  stimu- 
lants. 

They  will  doubtless  be  disinclined  to  embrace  this 
explanation  of  their  marvels,  and  will  argue  that  it  is 
much  more  likely  that  a  table  is  made  by  ten  or  twelve 
gentlemen  and  ladies  to  turn  rapidly  round,  without 
the  application  of  muscular  force,  than  that  these 
ladies  and  gentlemen  should  delude  themselves  into  an 
erroneous  belief  that  such  a  phenomenon  has  been 
produced.  To  disabuse  them  of  such  an  opinion,  they 
must  be  instructed  in  the  wondrous  and  strangely  del- 
icate mechanism  of  the  human  intellect  and  affections. 
And  after  such  enlightenment  they  must  be  hope- 
lessly dull  or  perverse  if  they  do  not  see  that  the  meta- 
physical explanation  of  "their  cases"  is  not  only  the 
true  one,  but  that  it  opens  up  to  view  far  more  aston- 
ishing features  in  the  constitution  of  man  than  any 
that  are  dreamt  of  in  the  vain  philosophy  of  mesmer- 
ism. It  is  humiliating  to  think  that  these  remarks 
should  be  an  appropriate  comment  on  the  silliness  of 
the  so-called  educated  classes  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. That  they  are  out  of  place,  none  can  advance, 
when  one  of  the  most  popular  pulpit  orators  of  Lon- 
don has  not  hesitated  to  commit  to  print,  in  a  work 
of  religious  pretensions,  the  almost  blasphemous  sug- 
gestion that  table-turning  is  a  phenomenon  conse- 
quent upon  the  first  out-poured  drops  of  ' '  the  seventh 
vial ' '  having  reached  the  earth. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

MAKE  WAY  FOR  THE  LADIES  ! 

"For  in  all  times,  in  the  opinion  of  the  multitude,  witches  and 
old  women  and  impostors  have  had  a  competition  with  phy- 
sicians. And  what  followeth?  Even  this,  that  physicians 
say  to  themselves,  as  Solomon  expresseth  it  upon  a  higher 
occasion,  'If  it  befall  to  me  as  befalleth  to  the  fools,  why 
should  I  labour  to  be  more  wise?'" — Lord  Bacon's  Ad- 
vancement of  Learning. 

It  is  time  to  say  sometliing  about  the  ladies  as  phy- 
sicians. Once  they  were  the  chief  practitioners  of 
medicine ;  and  even  to  recent  times  had  a  monopoly  of 
that  branch  of  art  over  which  Dr.  Locock  presides. 
The  question  has  lately  been  agitated  whether  certain 
divisions  of  remedial  industry  ought  not  again  to  be 
set  aside  for  them ;  and  the  patronage  afforded  to  the 
lady  who  (in  spite  of  the  ridicule  thrown  on  her,  and 
the  rejection  of  her  advances  by  various  medical 
schools  to  which  she  applied  for  admission  as  a  stu- 
dent), managed  to  obtain  a  course  of  medical  instruc- 
tion at  one  of  the  London  schools,  and  practised  for 
a  brief  time  in  London  previous  to  her  departure  for 
a  locality  more  suited  to  her  operations,  would  seem 
to  indicate  that  public  feeling  is  not  averse  to  the 


288  A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

thought  of  employing— under  certain  conditions  and 
for  certain  purposes— female  physicians. 

Of  the  many  doctresses  who  have  flourished  in 
England  during  the  last  200  years,  only  a  few  have 
left  any  memorial  of  their  actions  behind  them.  Of 
the  wise  women  (a  class  of  practitioners,  by-the-by, 
still  to  be  found  in  many  rural  villages  and  in  certain 
parts  of  London)  in  whom  our  ancestors  had  as  much 
confidence  as  we  of  the  present  generation  have  in 
the  members  of  the  College  of  Physicians,  we  question 
if  twoscore,  including  ]\Iargaret  Kennix  and  Mrs. 
\voodhouse,  of  the  Elizabethan  era,  could  be  rescued 
from  oblivion.  Some  of  them  wrote  books,  and  so,  by 
putting  their  names  "in  print,"  have  a  slight  hold  on 
posthumous  reputation.  Two  of  them  are  immortal- 
ized by  mention  in  the  records  of  the  "Philosophical 
Transactions  for  1694."  These  ladies  were  Mrs.  Sarah 
Hastings  and  Mrs.  French.  The  curious  may  refer 
to  the  account  there  given  of  the  ladies'  skill;  and 
also,  for  further  particulars  relative  to  Sarah  Hast- 
ings, a  glance  may  be  given  to  M.  de  la  Cross's  "Me- 
moirs for  the  Ingenious,"  published  in  the  month  of 
July,  1693.  We  do  not  care  to  transcribe  the  passages 
into  our  own  pages ;  though,  now  that  it  is  the  fashion 
to  treat  all  the  unpleasant  details  of  nursing  as  mat- 
ters of  romance,  we  presume  there  is  nothing  in  the 
cases  mentioned  calculated  to  shock  public  delicacy. 

A  most  successful  "wise  woman"  was  Joanna 
Stephens,  an  ignorant  and  vulgar  creature,  who,  just 
before  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  proclaimed 
that  she  had  discovered  a  sovereign  remedy  for  a  pain- 
ful malady,  which,  like  the  smallpox,  has  become  in 
the  hands  of  modern  surgery  so  manageable  that  ere 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  289 

long  it  will  rank  as  little  more  than  "a  temporary 
discomfort."  Joanna  was  a  courageous  woman.  She 
went  straightway  to  temporal  peers,  bishops,  duchess- 
es, and  told  them  she  was  the  woman  for  their  money. 
They  believed  her,  testified  to  the  marvellous  cures 
which  she  had  effected,  and  allowed  her  to  make  use 
of  their  titles  to  awe  sceptics  into  respect  for  her 
powers.  Availing  herself  of  this  permission,  she  pub- 
lished books  containing  lists  of  her  cures,  backed  up 
by  letters  from  influential  members  of  the  nobility  and 
gentry. 

In  the  April  number  of  the  Gentleman's  Magazine 
for  the  year  1738,  one  reads— "Mrs.  Stephens  has 
proposed  to  make  her  medicine  publick,  on  consid- 
eration of  £5000  to  be  raised  by  contribution  and 
lodged  with  Mr.  Drummond,  banker;  he  has  received 
since  the  11th  of  this  month  about  £500  on  that  ac- 
count." By  the  end  of  the  month  the  banker  had  in 
his  hands  £720  8s.  Gd. 

This  generous  offer  was  not  made  until  the  inventor 
of  the  nostrums  had  enriched  herself  by  enormous 
fees  drawn  from  the  credulity  of  the  rich  of  every 
sect  and  rank.  The  subscription  to  pay  her  the 
amount  she  demanded  for  her  secret  was  taken  up  en- 
thusiastically. Letters  appeared  in  the  Journals  and 
Magazines,  arguing  that  no  humane  or  patriotic  man 
could  do  otherwise  than  contribute  to  it.  The  move- 
ment was  well  whipped  up  by  the  press.  The  Bishop 
of  Oxford  gave  £10  10s;  Bishop  of  Gloucester,  £10 
IDs.;  The  Earl  of  Pembroke,  £50;  Countess  of  Delo- 
raine,  £5  5s. ;  Lady  Betty  Jermaine,  £21 ;  Lady  Vere 
Beauclerc,  £10  10s. ;  Earl  of  Godolphin,  £100 ;  Duch- 
ess of  Gordon,  £5  5s. :  Viscount  Lonsdale,  £52  10s. ; 

4-19 


290  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

Duke  of  Rutland,  £50 ;  the  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  £25 ; 
Sir  James  Lowther,  Bart.,  £25 ;  Lord  Cadogan,  £2  26-. ; 
Lord  Cornvvallis,  £20;  Duchess  of  Portland,  £21;  Earl 
of  Clarendon,  £25;  Lord  Lymington,  £5;  Duke  of 
Leeds,  £21;  Lord  Galloway,  £30;  General  Churchill 
(Spot  Ward's  friend),  £10  10s.;  Countess  of  Hunt- 
ingdon, £10  10s. ;  lion.  Frances  Woodhouse,  £10  10s. ; 
Sir  Thomas  Lowther,  Bart.,  £5  5s. ;  Duke  of  Rich- 
mond, £30;  Sir  George  Saville,  Bart.,  £5  5s. 

These  were  only  a  few  of  the  noble  and  distinguished 
dupes  of  Joanna  Stephens.  Mrs.  Crowe,  in  her 
profound  and  philosophic  work,  "Spiritualism,  and 
the  Age  we  live  in, ' '  informs  us  that  ' '  the  solicitude ' ' 
about  the  subject  of  table-turning  "displayed  by 
many  persons  in  high  places,  is  the  best  possible  sign 
of  the  times;  and  it  is  one  from  which  she  herself 
hopes  that  the  period  is  arrived  when  we  shall  receive 
fui'fcher  help  from  God."  Hadn't  Joanna  Stephens 
reason  to  think  that  the  period  had  arrived  when  she 
and  her  remedial  system  would  receive  further  help 
from  God?  What  would  not  Read  (we  do  not  mean 
the  empiric  oculist  knighted  by  Queen  Anne,  but  the 
cancer  quack  of  our  own  time)  give  to  have  such  a 
list  of  aristocratic  supporters  ?  What  would  not  Mrs. 
Doctor  Goss  (who  in  this  year,  1861,  boasts  of  the 
patronage  of  "ladies  of  the  highest  distinction") 
give  for  a  similar  roll  of  adherents? 

The  agitation,  however,  for  a  public  subscription 
for  Joanna  Stephens  was  not  so  successful  as  her 
patrician  supporters  anticipated.  They  succeeded  in 
collecting  £1356  3s.  But  Joanna  stood  out:  her  se- 
cret should  not  go  for  less  than  £5000.  "No  pay,  no 
cure!"  was  her  cry.    The  next  thing  her  friends  did 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  291 

was  to  apply  to  Parliament  for  the  required  sum  — 
and,  positively,  their  request  was  granted.  The  na- 
tion, out  of  its  taxes,  paid  what  the  individuals  of  its 
wealthy  classes  refused  to  subscribe.  A  conunission 
was  appointed  by  Parliament,  that  gravely  inquired 
into  the  particulars  of  the  cures  alleged  to  be  per- 
formed by  Joanna  Stephens;  and,  finding  the  evi- 
dence in  favour  of  the  lady  unexceptionable,  they 
awarded  her  the  following  certificate,  which  ought  to 
be  preserved  to  all  ages  as  a  valuable  example  of  sen- 
atorial wisdom:  — 

The  Certificate  required  by  the  Act  op 
Parliament. 

March  5,  1739. 
"We,  whose  names  are  underwritten,  being  the 
major  part  of  the  Justices  appointed  by  an  Act  of 
Parliament,  entitled,  'An  Act  for  providing  a  Reward 
to  Joanna  Stephens,  upon  proper  discovery  to  be 
made  by  her,  for  the  use  of  the  Publick,  of  the  Medi- 
cines prepared  by  her '  —do   certify,   that  the 

said  Joanna  Stephens  did,  with  all  convenient  speed 
after  the  passing  of  the  said  Act,  make  a  discovery 
to  our  satisfaction,  for  the  use  of  the  publick,  of  the 
said  medicines,  and  of  her  method  of  preparing  the 
same;  and  that  we  have  examined  the  said  medi- 
cines, and  of  her  method  of  preparing  of  the  same, 
and  are  convinced  by  experiment  of  the  Utility,  Ef- 
ficacy, and  Dissolving  Power  thereof. 

"Jo.  Cant,  Tho.  Oxford, 

Hakdwicke,  C,  Ste.  Poyntz, 

Wilmington,  P.,  Stephen  Hales, 

Godolphin,  C.  p.  S.,     Jo.  Gardiner, 
Dorset,  Sim  Burton, 


292  a  book  about  doctors. 

Montague,  Peter  Shaw, 

Pembroke,  D.  Hartley, 

Baltimore,  W.  Cheselden, 

Cornburt,  C.  Hawkins, 

M.  Gloucester,  Sam.  Sharp." 

"Wten  such  men  as  Cheselden,  Hawkins,  and 
Sharp  could  sign  such  a  certificate,  we  need  feel  no 
surprise  at  the  conduct  of  Dr.  Nesbit  and  Dr.  Pellet 
(Mead's  early  friend,  who  rose  to  be  president  of 
the  College  of  Physicians).  These  two  gentlemen, 
who  were  on  the  commission,  having  some  scruples 
about  the  words  "dissolving  power,"  gave  separate 
testimonials  in  favour  of  the  medicines.  St.  John 
Long's  cause,  it  may  be  remembered,  was  advocated 
by  Dr.  Ramadge,  a  Fellow  of  the  College. 

The  country  paid  its  money,  and  obtained  Joanna's 
prescriptions.    Here  is  a  portion  of  the  lady's  state- 
ment : — 
"A  full  Discovery  of  the  Medicines  given  by  me, 

Joanna  Stephens,  and  a  particular  account  of  my 

method  of  preparing  and  giving  the  same. 

"My  medicines  are  a  Powder,  a  Decoction,  and 
Pills. 

"The  Powder  consists  of  egg-shells  and  snails— 
both  calcined. 

"The  Decoction  is  made  by  boiling  some  herbs  (to- 
gether with  a  ball  which  consists  of  soap,  swine 's- 
cresses  burnt  to  a  blackness,  and  honey)  in  water. 

"The  Pills  consist  of  snails  calcined,  wild  car- 
rot seeds,  burdock  seeds,  ashen  keys,  hips  and  hawes 
— all  burnt  to  a  blackness— soap  and  honey. 

"The  powder  is  thus  prepared :— Take  hen's  egg- 
shells, well  drained  from  the  whites,  dry  and  clean; 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTOES.  293 

crush  them  small  with  the  hands,  and  fill  a  crucible  of 
the  twelfth  size  (which  contains  nearly  three  pints) 
with  them  lightly,  place  it  on  the  fire  till  the  egg- 
shells be  calcined  to  a  greyish  white,  and  acquire  an 
acrid,  salt  taste :  this  will  take  up  eight  hours,  at  least. 
After  they  are  thus  calcined,  put  them  in  a  dry, 
clean  earthen  pan,  which  must  not  be  above  three 
parts  full,  that  there  may  be  room  for  the  swelling 
of  the  egg-shells  in  stacking.  Let  the  pan  stand  un- 
covered in  a  dry  room  for  two  months,  and  no  long- 
er ;  in  this  time  the  egg-shells  will  become  of  a  mild- 
er taste,  and  that  part  which  is  sufBciently  calcined 
will  fall  into  a  powder  of  such  a  fineness,  as  to  pass 
through  a  common  hairsieve,  which  is  to  be  done  ac- 
cordingly. 

"In  like  manner,  take  garden  snails,  with  their 
shells,  cleaned  from  the  dirt;  fill  a  crucible  of  the 
same  size  with  them  whole,  cover  it,  and  place  it  on 
the  fire  as  before,  till  the  snails  have  done  smoak- 
ing,  which  will  be  in  about  an  hour— taking  care  that 
they  do  not  continue  in  the  fire  after  that.  They  are 
then  to  be  taken  out  of  the  crucible,  and  immediately 
rubbed  in  a  moi-tar  to  a  fine  powder,  which  ought  to 
be  of  a  very  dark-grey  colour. 

"Note. — If  pit-coal  be  made  use  of,  it  will  be  proper — in 
order  that  the  fire  may  the  sooner  burn  clear  on  the  top — that 
large  cinders,  and  not  fresh  coals,  be  placed  upon  the  tiles 
which  cover  the  crucibles. 

' '  These  powders  being  thus  prepared,  take  the  egg- 
shell powder  of  six  crucibles,  and  the  snail-powder 
of  one;  mix  them  together,  and  rub  them  in  a  mor- 
tar, and  pass  them  through  a  cjT)ress  sieve.  This 
mixture  is  immediately  to  be  put  up  into  bottles, 
whicli  must  be  close  stopped,  and  kept  in  a  dry  place 


294  A   BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

for  use.  I  have  generallj'  added  a  small  quantity 
of  swine 's-cresses,  burnt  to  a  blackness,  and 
nibbed  fine;  but  this  was  only  with  a  view  to  dis- 
"Tuise  it. 

"The  egg-shells  may  be  prepared  at  any  time  of  the 
year,  but  it  is  best  to  do  them  in  summer.  The  snails 
ought  only  to  be  prepared  in  May,  June,  July,  and 
August;  and  I  esteem  those  best  which  are  done  in 
the  first  of  these  months. 

"The  decoction  is  thus  prepared :— Take  four 
ounces  and  a  half  of  the  best  Alicant  soap,  beat  it  in 
a  mortar  with  a  large  spoonful  of  swine 's-cresses 
burnt  to  a  blackness,  and  as  much  honey  as  will 
make  the  whole  of  the  consistence  of  paste.  Let  this 
be  formed  into  a  ball.  Take  this  ball,  and  green 
camomile,  or  camomile  flowers,  sweet  fennel,  parsley, 
and  burdock  leaves,  of  each  an  ounce  (when  there 
are  not  greens,  take  the  same  quantity  of  roots) ;  slice 
the  ball,  and  boil  them  in  two  quarts  of  soft  water 
half  an  hour,  then  strain  it  off,  and  sweeten  it  with 
honey. 

"The  pills  are  thus  prepared:— Take  equal  quanti- 
ties by  measure  of  snails  calcined  as  before,  of  wild 
carrot  seeds,  burdock  seeds,  ashen  keys,  hips  and 
hawes,  all  burnt  to  a  blackness,  or,  which  is  the  same 
thing,  till  they  have  done  smoaking;  mix  them  to- 
gether, rub  them  in  a  mortar,  and  pass  them  through 
a  cypress  sieve.  Then  take  a  large  spoonful  of  this 
mixture,  and  four  ounces  of  the  best  Alicant  soap, 
and  beat  them  in  a  mortar  with  as  much  honey  as 
will  make  the  whole  of  a  proper  consistence  for  pills ; 
sixty  of  which  are  to  be  made  out  of  every  ounce  of 
the  composition." 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  295 

Five  thousand  pounds  for  such  stuff  as  this!— and 
the  time  was  coming  when  the  nation  grudged  an  in- 
adequate reward  to  Jenner,  and  haggled  about  the 
purchase  of  Hunter's  Museum ! 

But  a  more  remarkable  case  of  feminine  success  in 
the  doctoring  line  was  that  of  Mrs.  Mapp,  who  was 
a  contemporary  of  Mrs.  Stephens.  Under  the  patron- 
age of  the  Court,  "Drop  and  Pill"  Ward  (or  "Spot" 
Ward,  as  he  was  also  called,  from  a  mole  on  his  cheek) 
was  astonishing  London  with  his  cures,  and  his  gor- 
geous equipage  which  he  had  the  royal  permission 
to  drive  through  St.  James  Park,  when  the  attention 
of  the  fashionable  world  was  suddenly  diverted  to 
the  proceeding  of  "Crazy  Sally  of  Epsom."  She 
was  an  enormous,  fat,  ugly,  drunken  woman,  known 
as  a  haunter  of  fairs,  about  which  she  loved  to  reel, 
screaming  and  abusive,  in  a  state  of  roaring  intoxica- 
tion. This  attractive  ladj"-  was  a  bone-setter;  and 
so  much  esteemed  was  she  for  skill  in  her  art,  that 
the  town  of  Epsom  offered  her  £100  if  she  would  re- 
side there  for  a  year.  The  following  passage  we  take 
from  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  1736 :  "Saturday 
31.  In  the  Daily  Advertiser,  July  28,  Joshua  Ward, 
Esq.,  having  the  queen's  leave,  recites  seven  extraor- 
dinary cases  of  persons  which  were  cured  by  him, 
and  examined  before  her  Majesty,  June  7,  objections 
to  which  had  been  made  in  the  Grub  Street  Journal, 
June  24.  But  the  attention  of  the  public  has  been 
taken  off  from  the  wonder-working  Mr.  Ward  to  a 
strolling  woman  now  at  Epsom,  who  calls  herself 
Crazy  Sally;  and  had  performed  cures  in  bone-set- 
ting to  admiration,  and  occasioned  so  great  a  resort. 


296  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

that  the  town  offered  her  100  guineas  to  continue 
there  a  year." 

"Crazy  Sally"  awoke  one  morning  and  found  her- 
self famous.  Patients  of  rank  and  wealth  flocked  in 
from  every  quarter.  Attracted  by  her  success,  an  Ep- 
som swain  made  an  offer  of  marriage  to  Sally,  which 
she  like  a  fool  accepted.  Her  maiden  name  of  Wallin 
(she  was  the  daughter  of  a  AViltshire  bone-setter  of 
that  name)  she  exchanged  at  the  altar  for  that  of 
Mapp.  If  her  marriage  was  not  in  all  respects  fortu- 
nate, she  was  not  burdened  with  much  of  her  hus- 
band's society.  He  lived  with  her  only  for  a  fort- 
night, during  which  short  space  of  time  he  thrashed 
her  soundly  twice  or  thrice,  and  then  decamped  with 
a  hundred  guineas  of  her  earnings.  She  found  con- 
solation for  her  wounded  affections  in  the  homage 
of  the  world.  She  became  a  notoriety  of  the  first 
water,  and  every  day  some  interesting  fact  appeared 
about  her  in  the  prints  and  public  journals.  In  one 
we  are  told  "the  cures  of  the  woman  bone-setter  of 
Epsom  are  too  many  to  be  enumerated :  her  bandages 
are  extraordinary  neat,  and  her  dexterity  in  reducing 
dislocations  and  setting  fractured  bones  wonderful. 
She  has  cured  persons  who  have  been  twenty  years 
disabled,  and  has  given  incredible  relief  in  the  most 
difficult  cases.  The  lame  come  daily  to  her,  and  she 
gets  a  great  deal  of  money,  persons  of  quality  who 
attend  her  operations  making  her  presents." 

Poets  sounded  her  praises.  Vide  Gentleman's 
Magazine,  August,  1736 : 

"On  Mrs  Mapp,  the  famous  Bone-setter  op  Ep- 
som. 
"Of  late,  without  the  least  pretence  to  skill. 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  297 

Ward's  grown  a  fam'd  physician  by  a  pill ; 
Yet  he  can  but  a  doubtful  honour  claim, 
While  envious  Death  oft  blasts  his  rising  fame. 
Next  travell'd  Taylor  fills  us  with  surprise, 
Who  pours  new  light  upon  the  blindest  eyes; 
Each  journal  tells  his  circuit  through  the  land. 
Each  journal  tells  the  blessings  of  his  hand; 
And  lest  some  hireling  scribbler  of  the  town 
Injure  his  history,  he  writes  his  own. 
We  read  the  long  accounts  with  wonder  o'er; 
Had  he  wrote  less,  we  had  believed  him  more. 
Let  these,  O  Mapp,  thou  wonder  of  the  age  I 
With  dubious  arts  endeavor  to  engage; 
While  you,  irregularly  strict  to  rules. 
Teach  dull  collegiate  pedants  they  are  fools; 
By  merit,  the  sure  path  to  fame  pursue — 
For  all  who  see  thy  art  must  own  it  true." 

•  Mrs.  Mapp  continued  to  reside  in  Epsom,  but  she 
visited  London  once  a  week.  Her  journeys  to  and 
from  the  metropolis  she  performed  in  a  chariot 
drawn  by  four  horses,  with  servants  wearing  splen- 
did liveries.  She  used  to  put  up  at  the  Grecian  Cof- 
fee-House,  where  Sir  Hans  Sloane  witnessed  her  op- 
erations, and  was  so  favourably  impressed  by  them, 
that  he  put  under  her  charge  his  niece,  who  was 
suffering  from  a  spinal  affection,  or,  to  use  the  exact 
and  scientific  language  of  the  newspapers,  "whose 
back  had  been  broke  nine  years,  and  stuck  out  two 
inches."  The  eminent  lady  went  to  the  playhouse 
in  Lincoln 's-Inn-Fields  to  see  the  Husband's  relief 
acted.  Her  presence  not  only  produced  a  crowded 
house,  but  the  fact  that  she  sate  between  Taylor  the 
quack  oculist  on  one  side,  and  Ward  the  drysaHer  on 
the  other,  gave  occasion  for  the  production  of  the  fol- 
lowing epigram,  the  point  of  which  is  perhaps  almost 
as  remarkable  as  its  polish  :— 

"While  Mapp  to  the  actors  showed  a  kind  regard, 
On  one  side  Taylor  sat,  on  the  other  Ward; 
When  their  mock  persons  of  the  drama  came. 


298  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

Both  IVard  and  Taylor  thought  it  hurt  their  fame; 
VVonder'd  how  Mapp  could  in  good  humour  be, 
'Zoons!'  crys  the  manly  dame,  'it  hurts  not  me; 
Quacks  without  art  may  either  blind  or  kill, 
But  demonstration  proves  that  mine  is  skill.'  " 

On  the  stage,  also,  a  song  was  sung  in  honour  of 
Mrs.  Mapp,  and  in  derision  of  Taylor  and  Ward.  It 
ran  thus:— 

"You  surgeons  of  London,  who  puzzle  your  pates, 
To  ride  in  your  coaches,  and  purchase  estates, 
Give  over  for  shame,  for  pride  has  a  fall. 
And  the  doctress  of  Epsom  has  out-done  you  all. 

Dr-ry  down,  &c. 

"What  signifies  learning,  or  going  to  school. 
When  a  woman  can  do,  without  reason  or  rule. 
What  puts  you  to  nonplus,  and  baffles  your  art; 
For  petticoat  practice  has  now  got  the  start. 

Dcrry  down,  &c. 

"In  physic,  as  well  as  in  fashions,  we  find 
The  newest  has  always  its  run  with  mankind; 
Forgot  is  the  bustle  'bout  Taylor  and  Ward, 
And  Mapp's  all  the  cry,  and  her  fame's  on  record. 

Derry  down,  &c. 

"Dame  Nature  has  given  a  doctor's  degree — 
She  gets  all  the  patients,  and  pockets  the  fee; 
So  if  you  don't  instantly  prove  her  a  cheat, 
She'll  loll  in  her  carriage,  whilst  you  walk  the  street. 

Derry  down,  Sc." 

On  one  occasion,  as  this  lady  was  proceeding  up  the 
Old  Kent  Road  to  the  Borough,  in  her  carriage  and 
four,  dressed  in  a  loosely-fitting  robe-de-chambre,  and 
manifesting  by  her  manner  that  she  had  partaken 
somewhat  too  freely  of  Geneva  water,  she  found  her- 
self in  a  very  trying  position.  Iler  fat  frame,  in- 
decorous dress,  intoxication,  and  dazzling  equipage, 
were  in  the  eyes  of  the  mob  such  sure  signs  of  roy- 
alty, that  she  was  immediately   taken    for   a   Court 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  299 

lady,  of  German  origin  and  unpopular  repute,  whose 
word  was  omnipotent  at  St.  James's. 

Soon  a  crowd  gathered  round  the  carriage,  and, 
with  the  proper  amount  of  swearing  and  yelhng, 
were  about  to  break  the  windows  with  stones,  when 
the  spirited  occupant  of  the  vehicle,  acting  very  much 
as  Nell  Gwyn  did  on  a  similar  occasion,  rose  from 
her  seat,  and  letting  down  the  glasses,  exclaimed, 
with    an    imprecation    more    emphatic    than    polite, 

" !    Don 't  you  know  me  ?    I  am  Mrs.  Mapp,  the 

bone-setter ! ' ' 

This  brief  address  so  tickled  the  humour  of  the 
mob,  that  the  lady  proceeded  on  her  way  amidst  deaf- 
ening acclamations  and  laughter. 

The  Taylor  mentioned  as  sitting  on  one  side  of 
Mrs.  Mapp  in  the  playhouse  was  a  notable  character. 
A  cunning,  plausible,  shameless  blackguard,  he  was 
eminently  successful  in  his  vocation  of  quack.  Dr. 
King,  in  his  "Anecdotes  of  his  own  Times,"  speaks  of 
him  with  respect.  "I  was  at  Tunbridge, "  says  the 
Doctor,  "with  Chevalier  Taylor,  the  oculist.  He 
seems  to  understand  the  anatomy  of  the  eye  perfectly 
well ;  he  has  a  fine  hand  and  good  instruments,  and 
performs  all  his  operations  with  great  dexterity ;  but 
he  undertakes  everything  (even  impossible  cases), 
and  promises  everything.  No  charlatan  ever  appeared 
with  fitter  and  more  excellent  talents,  or  to  great- 
er advantage ;  he  has  a  good  person,  is  a  natural  ora- 
tor, and  has  a  faculty  of  learning  foreign  languages. 
He  has  travelled  over  all  Europe,  and  has  always  with 
him  an  equipage  suitable  to  a  man  of  the  first  qual- 
ity ;  and  has  been  introduced  to  most  of  the  sovereign 


300  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

princes,  from  whom  he  has  received  many  marks  of 
their  liberalitj'  and  esteem." 

Dr.  King,  in  a  Latin  inscription  to  the  mountebank, 
says:— 

"Hie  est,  hie  vir  est, 

Quern  docti,   indoctique   omnes   impen^c  mirantur, 

Johannes  Taylor; 

Ccecigenorum,  ccECorum,  coeciuiiuum, 

Quot  quot  sunt  ubique, 

Spes  unica — Solamen — Salus." 

The  Chevalier  Taj'lor  (as  he  always  styled  him- 
self), in  his  travels  about  the  country,  used  to  give 
lectures  on  "The  Eye,"  in  whatever  place  he  tarried. 
These  addresses  were  never  explanatory  of  the  anato- 
my of  the  organ,  but  mere  absurd  rhapsodies  on  it 
as  an  ingenious  and  wonderful  contrivance. 

Chevalier's  oration  to  the  university  of  Oxford, 
which  is  still  extant,  began  thus:— 

"The  eye,  most  illustrious  sons  of  the  muses,  most 
learned  Oxonians,  whose  fame  I  have  heard  celebrated 
in  all  parts  of  the  globe— the  eye,  that  most  amazing, 
tTiat  stupendous,  that  comprehending,  that  incompre- 
hensible, that  miraculous  organ,  the  eye,  is  the  Pro- 
teus of  the  passions,  the  herald  of  the  mind,  the  inter- 
preter of  the  heart,  and  the  window  of  the  soul. 
The  eye  has  dominion  over  all  things.  The  world 
was  made  for  the  eye,  and  the  eye  for  the  world. 

"My  subject  is  Light,  most  illustrious  sons  of  lit- 
erature—intellectual light.  Ah !  my  philosophical, 
metaphysical,  my  classical,  mathematical,  mechanical, 
my  theological,  my  critical  audience,  my  subject  is 
the  eye.    You  are  the  eye  of  England ! 

"England  has  two  eyes— Oxford  and  Cambridge. 
They  are  the  two  eyes  of  England,  and  two  intellect- 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  301 

ual  eyes.  Tou  are  the  right  eye  of  England,  tjie  elder 
sister  in  science,  and  the  first  fountain  of  learning 
in  all  Europe.  "What  filial  joy  must  exult  in  my  bos- 
om, in  my  vast  circuit,  as  copious  as  that  of  the  sun 
himself,  to  shine  in  my  course,  upon  this  my  native 
soil,  and  give  light  even  at  Oxford! 

' '  The  eye  is  the  husband  of  the  soul ! 

"The  eye  is  indefatigable.  The  eye  is  an  angelic 
incxilty.  The  eye  in  this  respect  is  a  female.  The 
eye  is  never  tired  of  seeing;  that  is,  of  taking  in,  as- 
similating, and  enjoying  all  Nature's  vigour." 

When  the  Chevalier  was  ranting  on  in  this  fashion 
at  Cambridge  (of  course  there  terming  Oxford  the 
left  eye  of  England),  he  undertook  to  express  every 
passion  of  the  mind  by  the  eye  alone. 

"Here  you  have  surprise,  gentlemen ;  here  you  have 
delight ;  here  you  have  terror ! ' ' 

"Ah!"  cried  an  undergraduate,  "there's  no  merit 
in  that,  for  you  tell  us  beforehand  what  the  emotion 
is.  Now  next  time  say  nothing— and  let  me  guess 
what  the  feeling  is  you  desire  to  express." 

"Certainly,"  responded  the  Doctor,  cordially; 
"nothing  can  be  more  reasonable  in  the  way  of  a 
proposition.    Now  then,  sir,  what  is  this?" 

"Oh,  veneration,  I  suppose." 

"Certainly— quite  right— and  this?" 

"Pity." 

"Oi  course,  sir:  yon  see  it's  impossible  for  an  ob- 
servant gentleman  like  yourself  to  misunderstand  the 
language  of  the  eye,"  answered  the  oculist,  whose 
plan  was  only  to  assent  to  his  young  friend's  deci- 
sions. 

In  the  year  1736,  when  the  Chevalier  was  at  the 


302  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

height  of  his  fame,  he  received  the  following  humor- 
ous letter:  — 

"DoMiNE,— 0  tu,  qui  in  oculis  hominum  versaris, 
et  quamcuiKjue  tractas  rem,  acu  tangis,  salvo!  Tu, 
(jui,  instar  Phtubi,  lumen  orbi,  et  orbes  luminibus 
reddis,  iterum  salve ! 

"Cum  per  te  Gallia,  per  te  nostra;  academia?,  duo 
regni  lumina,  clarius  iutuentur,  cur  non  ad  urbem 
Edinburgi,  cum  toties  ubique  erras,  cursum  tendisT 
nam  qua'dam  ccecitas  cives  illic  invasit.  Ipsos  magis- 
tratus  Gutia  Serena  occupaAdt,  videntur  enim  -iidere, 
sed  nihil  vident.  Idcirco  tu  istam  Scoticam  Nebulam 
ex  oculis  remove,  et  quodcunque  latet  in  tenebris,  in 
lucem  prefer.  Illi  violenter  carcerem,  tu  oculos  leni- 
ter  reclude;  illi  lucem  Porteio  ademerunt,  tu  illis  lu- 
cem resrtitue,  et  quamvis  fingant  so  dupliciter  videre, 
fac  ut  simpliciter  tantum  oculo  irretorto  conspiciant. 
Peractoque  cursu,  ad  Angliam  redi  artis  tuai  plenus, 
Toriosque  (ut  vulgo  vocantur)  qui  adhuc  ca?cutiant 
et  hallucinantur,  illuminato.  Ab  ipsis  clericis,  si  qui 
sint  coeci  ductores,  nubem  discute;  immo  ipso  Sole 
lunaque,  ci;m  laborant  eclipsi,  qave,  instar  tui  ipsius, 
transit  per  varias  regiones  obumbrans,  istam  molem 
caliginis  amoveto.  Sic  eris  Sol  Mundi,  sic  ei"is  non 
solum  nomine  Sartor,  sed  re  Oculorum  omnium  resar- 
citor;  sic  omuis  Charta  Publica  tuam  Claritudinem 
celebrabit,  et  ubicunque  frontem  tuam  ostendis,  nemo 
non  te,  0  vir  speetatissime,  admirabitur.  Ipse  lippus 
scriptor  hujus  epistoke  maxime  gauderet  te  Medicum 
Illustrissimum,  cum  omnibus  tuis  oculatis  testibua, 
Vindsoriae  videre. — Vale." 

The  Chevalier  had  a  son  and  a  biographer  in  the 
person  of  John  Taylor,  who,  under  the  title  of  "John 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  303 

Taylor,  Junior,"  succeeded  to  his  father's  trumpet, 
and  blew  it  with  good  effect.  The  title-page  of  his 
biography  of  his  father  enumerates  some  half-hun- 
dred crowned  or  royal  heads,  to  whose  eyes  the 
"Chevalier  John  Taylor,  Opthalmiater  Pontifical, 
Imperial,  and  Royal,"  administered. 

But  this  work  was  feeble  and  contemptible  com- 
pared with  the  Chevalier's  autobiographic  sketch  of 
himself,  in  his  proposal  for  publishing  which  he 
speaks  of  his  loves  and  adventures,  in  the  following 
modest  style:— 

' '  I  had  the  happiness  to  be  also  personally  known  to 
two  of  the  most  amiable  ladies  this  age  has  produced 
—namely,  Lady  Inverness  and  Lady  Mackintosh; 
both  powerful  figures,  of  great  abilities,  and  of  the 
most  pleasing  address— both  the  sweetest  prattlers, 
the  prettiest  reasoners,  and  the  best  judges  of  the 
charms  of  high  life  that  I  ever  saw.  When  I  first  be- 
held these  wonders  I  gazed  on  their  beauties,  and 
my  attention  was  busied  in  admiring  the  order  and 
delicacy  of  their  discourse,  &c.  For  were  I  com- 
manded to  seek  the  world  for  a  lady  adorned  with 
every  accomplishment  that  man  thinks  desirable  in 
the  sex,  I  could  only  be  determined  by  finding  their 
resemblance 

"  I  am  perfectly  acquainted  with  the  history  of  Per- 
sia, as  well  before  as  since  the  death  of  Thamas  Kou- 
li  Khan;  well  informed  of  the  adventures  of  Prince 
Heraclius;  was  personally  known  to  a  minister  he 
sent  to  Moscow  in  his  first  attempt  to  conquer  that 
country;  and  am  instructed  in  the  cruel  manner  of 
putting  out  the  eyes  of  conquered  princes,  and  of  cut- 


304  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

ting  away  the  eyelids  of  soldiers  taken  ir  war,  to  make 
them  unfit  for  service. 

"I  have  lived  in  many  convents  of  friars  of  differ- 
ent orders,  been  present  at  their  creation  to  various 
degrees,  and  have  assisted  at  numberless  entertain- 
ments upon  those  occasions. 

"I  have  been  in  almost  every  female  nunnery  in 
all  Europe  (on  account  of  my  profession),  and  could 
write  many  volumes  on  the  adventures  of  these  relig- 
ious beauties. 

"I  have  been  present  at  the  making  of  nuns  of 
almost  every  order,  and  assisted  at  the  religious  feasts 
given  on  those  occasions. 

' '  I  have  met  with  a  very  great  variety  of  singular 
religious  people  called  Pilgrims. 

"I  have  been  present  at  many  extraordinary  di- 
versions designed  for  the  amusement  of  the  sovereign, 
viz.  hunting  of  different  sorts  of  wild  beasts,  as  in 
Poland;  bull-fighting,  as  in  Spain. 

"I  am  well  acquainted  with  all  the  various  pun- 
ishments for  different  crimes,  as  practised  in  every 
nation— been  present  at  the  putting  of  criminals  to 
death  by  various  ways,  viz.  striking  off  heads,  break- 
ing on  the  wheel,  &c. 

"I  am  also  well  instructed  in  the  different  ways  of 
giving  the  torture  to  extract  confession— and  am  no 
stranger  to  other  singular  punishments,  such  as  im- 
paling, burying  alive  with  head  above  ground,  &c. 

"And  lastly,  I  have  assisted,  have  seen  the  manner 
of  embalming  dead  bodies  of  great  personages,  and 
am  well  instructed  in  the  manner  practised  in  some 
nations  for  preserving  them  entire  for  ages,   with 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  305 

little  alteration  of  figure  from  what  they  were  when 
first  deprived  of  life.  .  .  . 

"All  must  agree  that  no  man  ever  had  a  greater 
variety  of  matter  worthy  to  be  conveyed  to  posterity. 
I  shall,  therefore,  give  my  best  care  to,  so  to  paint  my 
thoughts,  and  give  such  a  dress  of  the  story  of  my 
life,  that  tho'  I  shall  talk  of  the  Great,  the  Least  shall 
not  find  cause  of  offence." 

The  occasion  of  this  greart  man  issuing  so  modest  a 
proposal  to  the  public  is  involved  in  some  mystery,  i 
It  would  seem  that  he  determined  to  publish  his  own 
version  of  his  adventures,  in  consequence  of  being 
dissatisfied  with  his  son's  sketch  of  them.  John 
Taylor,  Junior,  was  then  resident  in  Hatton  Garden, 
living  as  an  eye-doctor,  and  entered  into  an  arrange- 
ment with  a  publisher,  without  his  father's  consent,  to 
write  the  Chevalier's  biography.  Affixed  to  the  in- 
decent pamphlet,  which  was  the  result  of  this  agree- 
ment, are  the  following  epistolary  statements:  — 

"My  Son,— If  you  should  unguardedly  have  suf- 
fered your  name  at  the  head  of  a  work  which  must 
make  us  all  contemptible,  this  must  be  printed  in  it 
as  the  best  apology  for  yourself  and  father : — 

"to  the  printer. 

Oxford,  Jan.  lo,  1761. 
"My  dear  and  only  son  having  respectfully  repre- 
sented to  me  that  he  has  composed  a  work,  intitled 
My  Life  and  Adventures,  and  requires  my  consent 
for  its  publication,  notwithstanding  I  am  as  yet  a 
stranger  to  the  composition,  and  consequently  can  be 
no  judge  of  its  merits,  I  am  so  well  persuaded  that  my 
son  is  in  every  way  incapable  of  saying  aught  of  his 
father  but  what  must  redound  to  his  honour  and  rep- 

4—30 


306  A   BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

utation,  and  so  perfectly  convinced  of  the  goodness  of 
his  heart,  that  it  does  not  seem  possible  I  should  err 
in  my  judgment,  by  giving  my  consent  to  a  publica- 
tion of  the  said  work.  And  as  I  have  long  been  em- 
ployed in  writing  my  own  Life  and  Adventures, 
which  will  with  all  expedition  be  published,  'twill 
hereafter  be  left  with  all  due  attention  to  the  candid 
reader,  whether  the  Life  of  the  Father  written  by  the 
son,  or  the  Life  of  the  Father  %vritten  by  himself,  best 
deserves  approbation. 

"The  Chevalier  Taylor, 
"Opthalmiater,    Pontifical,   Imperial,  and   RoyaL 

<<•  •  •  rpjig  above  is  a  true  copy  of  the  letter 
my  Father  sent  me.  All  the  answer  I  can  make  to  the 
bills  he  sends  about  the  town  and  country  is,  that  I 
have  maintained  mj''  mother  these  eight  years,  and  do 
this  at  the  present  time ;  and  that,  two  years  since,  I 
was  concerned  fo"  him,  for  which  I  have  paid  near 
£200. 

"As  witness  my  hand, 

"John  Taylor,  Oculist." 

"Hatton  Garden." 

It  is  impossible  to  say  whether  these  differences 
were  genuine,  or  only  feigned  by  the  two  quacks,  in 
order  to  keep  silly  people  gossiping  about  them.  Cer- 
tainly the  accusations  brought  against  the  Chevalier, 
that  he  had  sponged  on  his  son,  and  declined  to  sup- 
port his  wife,  are  rather  grave  ones  to  introduce  into 
a  make-believe  quarrel.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
when  the  Chevalier's  autobiography  appeared  it  was 
prefaced  with  the  following  dedicatory  letter  to  his 
son:— 

"My  deab  Son,— Can  I  do  ill  when  I  address  to 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  307 

you  the  story  of  your  father's  life?  Whose  name  can 
be  so  proper  as  your  own  to  be  prefixed  to  a  work  of 
this  kind  ?  You  who  was  born  to  represent  me  living, 
when  I  shall  cease  to  be— born  to  pursue  that  most 
excellent  and  important  profession  to  which  I  have 
for  so  many  j'ears  labored  to  be  useful— born  to  de- 
fend my  cause  and  support  my  fame— may  I  not 
presume,  my  son,  that  you  will  defend  your  father's 
cause  ?  May  I  not  affirm  that  you,  my  son,  will  sup- 
port your  father's  fame?  After  having  this  said, 
need  I  add  more  than  remind  you— that,  to  a  father, 
nothing  can  be  so  dear  as  a  deserving  son— nor  state 
so  desirable  as  that  of  the  man  who  holds  his  succes- 
sor, and  knows  him  to  be  worthy.  Be  prosperous.  Be 
happy. 

"I  am,  your  affectionate  Father, 

"The  Chevalier  John  Taylor." 

This  unctuous  address  to  "my  lion-hearted  boy"  is 
equalled  in  drollery  by  many  passages  of  the  work 
itself,  which  (in  the  language  of  the  title-page)  "con- 
tains all  most  worthy  the  attention  of  a  Traveller— 
also  a  dissertation  on  the  Art  of  Pleasing,  with  the 
most  interesting  observations  on  the  Force  of  Preju- 
dice; numberless  adventures,  as  well  amongst  nuns 
and  friars  as  with  persons  in  high  life;  with  a  de- 
scription of  a  great  variety  of  the  most  admirable  re- 
lations, which,  though  told  in  his  well-known  peculiar 
manner,  each  one  is  strictly  true,  and  within  the  Che- 
valier's own  observations  and  knowledge." 

Apart  from  the  bombast  of  his  style,  the  Cheval- 
ier's "well-known  peculiar  manner"  was  remarkable 
for  Kttle  besides  tautology  and  a  fantastic  arrange- 
ment of  words.     In  his  orations,  when  he  aimed  at 


308  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

sublimity,  he  indulged  in  short  sentences  each  of 
which  commenced  with  a  genitive  case  followed  by  an 
accusative;  after  which  came  the  verb  succeeded  by 
the  nominative.  Thus,  at  such  crises  of  grandilo- 
quence, instead  of  saying,  "I  will  lecture  on  the  won- 
ders of  the  eye,"  he  would  invert  the  order  to,  "Of 
the  eye  on  the  wonders  lecture  will  I."  By  doing 
this,  he  maintained  that  he  surpassed  the  finest  per- 
iods of  Tully!  There  is  a  letter  in  Nichols's  "Liter- 
ary Anecdotes,"  in  which  a  lecture  given  by  this 
mountebank  at  Northampton  is  excellently  described. 
"The  doctor,"  says  the  writer,  "appeared  dressed  in 
black,  with  a  long  light  flowing  ty'd  wig;  ascended  a 
scalfold  behind  a  large  table  raised  about  two  feet 
from  the  ground,  and  covered  with  an  old  piece  of 
tapestry,  on  which  was  laid  a  dark-coloured  cafoy 
chariot-seat  with  four  black  bunches  (used  upon 
hearses)  tyed  to  the  corners  for  tassels,  four  large 
candles  on  each  side  of  the  cushion,  and  a  quart  de- 
canter of  drinking  water,  with  a  half-pint  glass,  to 
moisten  his  mouth." 

The  fellow  boasted  that  he  was  the  author  of  forty- 
five  works  in  different  languages.  Once  he  had  the 
audacity  to  challenge  Johnson  to  talk  Latin  with  him. 
The  doctor  responded  with  a  quotation  from  Horace, 
which  the  charlatan  took  to  be  the  doctor's  own  com- 
position. "He  said  a  few  words  ivcll  enough,"  John- 
son said  magnanimously  when  he  repeated  the  story 
to  Boswell.  "Taylor,"  said  the  doctor,  "is  the  most 
ignorant  man  I  ever  knew,  but  sprightly;  Ward,  the 
dullest." 

John  Taylor,  Junr.,  survived  his  father  more  than 
fifteen  years,  and  to  the  last  had  a  lucrative  business 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  309 

in  Hatton  Garden.  Plis  father  had  been  oculist  to 
George  the  Second ;  but  this  post,  on  the  death  of  the 
Chevalier,  he  failed  to  obtain,  it  being  given  to  a 
foreign  protege  of  the  Duke  of  Bedford's.  He  made 
a  great  noise  about  the  sufferings  of  the  poor,  and 
proposed  to  the  different  parishes  of  London  to  at- 
tend the  paupers  labouring  under  diseases  of  the  eye 
at  two  guineas  a-year  for  each  parish.  He  was  an  il- 
literate, vulgar,  and  licentious  scoundrel;  and  yet 
when  he  died,  on  the  17th  September,  17S7,  he  was 
honoured  with  a  long  memoir  in  the  Gentleman's 
Magazine,  as  one  "whose  philanthropy  was  exerted 
so  fully  as  to  class  him  with  a  Han  way  or  a  Howard." 

If  an  apology  is  needed  for  giving  so  much  space,  in 
a  chapter  devoted  to  the  ladies,  to  the  John  Taylors, 
it  must  be  grounded  on  the  fact  that  the  Chevalier 
was  the  son  of  an  honest  widow  woman  who  carried 
on  a  respectable  business,  as  an  apothecary  and  doc- 
tress,  at  Norwich.  In  this  she  resembled  Mrs.  Blood, 
the  wife  of  the  Colonel  of  that  name,  who  for  years 
supported  herself  and  son  at  Romford,  by  keeping  an 
apothecary's  shop  under  tlie  name  of  "Weston.  Col- 
onel Blood  was  also  himself  a  member  of  the  Faculty. 
For  some  time,  whilst  meditating  his  grand  coup,  he 
practised  as  a  doctor  in  an  obscure  part  of  the  City, 
under  the  name  of  Ayliffe. 

Two  hundred  years  since  the  lady  practitioners  of 
medicine  in  the  provinces  not  seldom  had  working 
for  them  pupils  and  assistants  of  the  opposite  sex, 
and  this  usage  was  maintained  in  secluded  districts 
till  a  comparatively  recent  date.  In  Houghton's  Col- 
lection, Nov.  15,  1695,  is  the  following  advertisement, 
— "If  any  Apothecary's  Widow  that  keeps  a  shop  in 


310  A   BOOK    AliOUT   DOCTORS. 

the  country  wants  a  journeyman  that  has  lived  25 
years  for  himself  in  London,  and  has  had  the  conver- 
sation of  the  eminent  physicians  of  the  colledge,  I  can 
help  to  such  an  one." 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

MESSENGER  MONSET. 

Amongst  the  celebrities  of  the  medical  profession, 
who  have  left  no  memorial  behind  them  more  durable 
or  better  known  than  their  wills  in  Doctors'  Com- 
mons, was  Messenger  Monsey,  the  great-grandfather 
of  our  ex-Chancellor,  Lord  Cranworth. 

"We  do  not  know  whether  his  Lordship  is  aware  of 
his  descent  from  the  eccentric  physician.  Possibly  he 
is  not,  for  the  Monseys,  though  not  altogether  of  a 
plebeian  stock,  were  little  calculated  to  throw  eclat 
over  the  genealogy  of  a  patrician  house. 

Messenger  Monsey,  who  used  with  a  good  deal  of 
unnecessary  noise  to  declare  his  contempt  of  the  an- 
cestral honours  which  he  in  reality  possessed,  loved  to 
tell  of  the  humble  origin  of  his  family.  The  first 
Duke  of  Leeds  delighted  in  boasting  of  his  lucky  pro- 
genitor, Jack  Osborn,  the  shop  lad,  who  rescued  his 
master's  daughter  from  a  watery  grave,  in  the 
Thames,  and  won  ber  hand  away  from  a  host  of  noble 
suitors,  who  wanted— literally,  the  young  lady's  pin- 
money.  She  was  the  only  child  of  a  wealthy  pin- 
maker  carrying  on  his  business  on  London  Bridge, 


312  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

and  the  jolly  old  fellow,  instead  of  disdaining  to  be- 
stow his  heiress  on  a  'prentice,  exclaimed,  "Jack  won 
her,  and  he  shall  wear  her!"  Dr.  Monsey,  in  the  hey- 
day of  his  social  fame,  told  his  friends  that  the  first  of 
his  ancestors  of  any  note  was  a  baker,  and  a  retail 
dealer  in  hops.  At  a  critical  point  of  this  worthy 
man's  career,  when  hops  were  "down"  and  feathers 
were  "up,"  to  raise  a  small  sum  of  money  for  imme- 
diate use  he  ripped  open  his  beds,  sold  the  feathers, 
and  stuffed  the  tick  with  unsaleable  hops.  Soon  a 
change  in  the  market  occurred,  and  once  more  oper- 
ating on  the  couches  used  by  himself  and  children,  he 
sold  the  hops  at  a  profit,  and  bought  back  the  feath- 
ers. "That's  the  way,  sir,  by  which  my  family  hop- 
ped from  obscurity!"  the  doctor  would  conclude. 

We  have  reason  for  thinking  that  this  ancestor  was 
the  physician's  great-grandfather.  As  is  usually 
found  to  be  the  case,  where  a  man  thinks  lightly  of 
the  advantages  of  birth.  Messenger  was  by  no  means 
of  despicable  extraction.  Ilis  grandfather  was  a  man 
of  considerable  property,  and  married  Elizabeth  Mes- 
senger, co-heir  of  Thomas  Messenger,  lord  of  Whit- 
well  Manor,  in  the  county  of  Norfolk,  a  gentleman  by 
birth  and  position;  and  his  father,  the  Rev.  Robert 
Monsey,  a  Norfolk  rector,  married  JIary,  the  daugh- 
ter of  Roger  Clopton,  rector  of  Downham.  Of  the 
antiquity  and  importance  of  the  Cloptons  amongst 
the  gentle  families  of  England  this  is  no  place  to 
speak;  but  further  particulars  relative  to  the  Monsey 
pedigree  may  be  found  by  the  curious  in  Bloomfield's 
"History  of  Norfolk."  On  such  a  descent  a  Celt 
would  persuade  himself  that  he  represented  kings 
and  rulers.     Monsey,  like  Sydney  Smith  after  him, 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTOKti.  313 

preferred   to  cover   the   whole   question  with  jolly, 
manly  ridicule,  and  put  it  out  of  sight. 

Messenger  Monsey  was  born  in  1693,  and  received 
in  early  life  an  excellent  education;  for  though  his 
father  at  the  Revolution  threw  his  lot  in  with  the  non- 
jurors, and  forfeited  his  living,  the  worthy  clergyman 
had  a  sufficient  paternal  estate  to  enable  Mm  to  rear 
his  only  child  without  any  painful  considerations  of 
cost.  After  spending  five  years  at  St.  Jlary's  Hall, 
Cambridge,  IMessenger  studied  physic  for  some  time 
under  Sir  Benjamin  Wrench,  at  Norwich.  Starting 
on  his  own  account,  he  practised  for  a  while  at  Bury 
St.  Edmunds,  in  Suffolk,  but  with  little  success.  He 
worked  hard,  and  yet  never  managed  in  that  prosper- 
ous and  beautiful  country  town  to  earn  more  than 
three  hundred  guineas  in  the  same  year.  If  we  exam- 
ined into  the  successes  of  medical  celebrities,  we 
.should  find  in  a  great  majority  of  cases  fortune  was 
won  by  the  aspirant  either  annexing  himself  to,  and 
gliding  into  the  confidence  of,  a  powerful  clique,  or 
else  by  his  being  through  some  lucky  accident  thro\\Ti 
in  the  way  of  a  patron.  Monsey 's  rise  was  of  the  lat- 
ter sort.  He  was  still  at  Bury,  with  nothing  before 
him  but  the  prospect  of  working  all  his  days  as  a 
country  doctor,  when  Lord  Godolphin,  son  of  Queen 
Anne's  Lord  Treasurer,  and  grandson  of  the  great 
Duke  of  Marlborough,  was  seized,  on  the  road  to 
Newmarket,  with  an  attack  of  apoplexy.  Bury  was 
the  nearest  point  where  medical  assistance  could  be 
obtained.  Monsey  was  summoned,  and  so  fascinated 
his  patient  with  his  conversational  powers  that  his 
Lordship  invited  him  to  London,  and  induced  him  to 
relinquish  his  country  practice. 


314  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

From  that  time  Monsey's  fortune  was  made.  He 
became  to  the  Whigs  very  much  what,  in  the  previous 
generation,  Radcliffe  had  been  to  the  Tories.  Sir 
Robert  Walpole  genuinely  loved  him,  seizing  every 
opportunity  to  enjoy  his  society,  and  never  doing 
anything  for  him ;  and  Lord  Chesterfield  was  amongst 
the  most  zealous  trumpeters  of  his  medical  skill. 
Lively,  sagacious,  well-read,  and  brutally  sarcastic, 
he  had  for  a  while  a  society  reputation  for  wit 
scarcely  inferior  to  Swift's;  and  he  lived  amongst 
men  well  able  to  judge  of  wit.  Garriek  and  he  were 
for  many  years  intimate  friends,  until,  in  a  contest  of 
jokes,  each  of  the  two  brilliant  men  lost  his  temper, 
and  they  parted  like  Roland  and  Sir  Leoline— never 
to  meet  again.  Garriek  probably  would  have  kept 
his  temper  under  any  other  form  of  ridicule,  but  he 
never  ceased  to  resent  Monsey's  reflection  on  his 
avarice  to  the  Bishop  of  Sodor  and  ]\Ian. 

"Garriek  is  going  to  quit  the  stage,"  observed  the 
Bishop. 

"That  he'll  never  do,"  answered  Monsey,  making 
use  of  a  Norfolk  proverb,  "so  long  as  he  knows  a 
guinea  is  cross  on  one  side  and  pile  on  the  other." 

This  speech  was  never  forgiven.  Lord  Bath  en- 
deavoured to  effect  a  reconciliation  between  the  di- 
vided friends,  but  his  amiable  intention  was  of  no 
avail. 

"I  thank  you,"  said  Monsey;  "but  why  will  your 
Lordship  trouble  yourself  with  the  squabbles  of  a 
Merry  Andrew  and  quack  doctor?" 

When  the  tragedian  was  on  his  death-bed,  Monsey 
composed  a  satire  on  the  sick  man,  renewing  the 
attack  on  his  parsimony.    Garriek 's  illness,  however. 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  315 

terminating  fatally,  the  doctor  destroyed  his  verses, 

but  some  scraps  of  them  still  remain  to  show  their 

spirit  and  power.     A  consultation  of  physicians  was 

represented  as  being  held  over  the  actor:— 

"Seven  wise  physicians  lately  met. 
To  save  a  wretched  sinner; 
Come,  Tom,  said  Jack,  pray  let's  be  quick, 

Or   I   shall  lose  my   dinner. 
*  *  *  * 

"Some  roared  for  rhubarb,  jalap  some, 
And  some  cried  out  for  Dover; 
Lets  give  him  something,  each  man  said — 
Why  e'en  let's  give  him — over." 

After  much  learned  squabbling,  one  of  the  sages 

proposed  to  revive  the  sinking  energies  of  the  poor 

man  by  jingling  guineas  in  his  ears.    The  suggestion 

was  acted  upon,  when— 

"Soon  as  the  fav'rite  sound  he  heard. 

One  faint  effort  he  try'd ; 
He  op'd  his  eyes,  he  stretched  his  hands. 
He  made  one  grasp— and  dy'd." 

Though,  on  the  grave  closing  over  his  antagonist, 
Mousey  suppressed  these  lines,  he  continued  to  cher- 
ish an  animosity  to  the  object  of  them.  The  spirit  in 
which,  out  of  respect  to  death,  he  drew  a  period  to 
their  quarrel,  was  much  like  that  of  the  Irish  peasant 
in  the  song,  who  tells  his  ghostly  adviser  that  he  for- 
gives Pat  Malone  with  all  his  heart  (supposing  deatli 
should  get  the  better  of  him)— but  should  he  recover, 
he  means  to  pay  the  rascal  off  roundly.  Sir  Walter 
Scott  somewhere  tells  a  story  of  a  Highland  chief,  in 
his  last  moments  declaring  that  he  from  the  bottom  of 
his  heart  forgave  his  old  enemy,  the  head  of  a  hostile 
clan— and  concluding  this  Christian  avowal  with  a 
final  address  to  his  son— "But  may  all  evil  light  upon 
ye,  Ronald,  if  ye  e'er  forgie  the  heathen." 


316  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

Throug'li  Lord  Godolphin's  interest,  Monsey  was 
appointed  physician  to  Chelsea  College,  on  the  death 
of  Dr.  Smart.  For  some  time  he  continued  to  reside 
in  St.  James's:  but  on  the  death  of  his  patron  he 
moved  to  Chelsea,  and  spent  the  last  j'ears  of  his  life 
in  retirement— and  to  a  certain  extent  banishment— 
from  the  great  world.  The  hospital  offices  were  then 
filled  by  a  set  of  low-bom  scoundrels,  or  discharged 
servants,  whom  the  ministers  of  various  Cabinets  had 
had  some  reason  of  their  own  for  providing  for.  The 
surgeon  was  that  Mr.  Ranby  who  positively  died  of 
rage  because  Henry  Fielding's  brother  (Sir  John) 
would  not  punish  a  hackney  coachman  who  had  been 
guilty  of  the  high  treason  of— being  injured  and 
abused  by  the  plaintiff.  With  this  man  Monsey  had 
a  tremendous  quarrel ;  but  though  in  the  right,  he 
had  to  submit  to  Ranby 's  powerful  connections. 

This  affair  did  not  soften  his  temper  to  the  other 
functionaries  of  the  hospital  with  whom  he  had  to 
associate  at  the  hall  table.  His  encounter  with  the 
venal  elector  who  had  been  nominated  to  a  Chelsea 
appointment  is  well  known,  though  an  account  of  it 
would  hurt  the  delicacy  of  these  somewhat  prudish 
pages.  Of  the  doctor's  insolence  the  following  is  a 
good  story:— 

A  clergyman,  who  used  to  bore  him  with  pompous 
and  pedantic  talk,  was  arguing  on  some  point  with 
Monsey,  when  the  latter  exclaimed:— 

"Sir,  if  you  have  faith  in  your  opinion,  will  you 
venture  a  wager  upon  it  ? " 

"I  could— but  I  won't,"  was  the  reply. 

"Then,"  rejoined  Monsey,  "you  have  very  little 
wit,  or  very  little  money."    The  logic  of  this  retort 


A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  317 

puts  one  in  mind  of  the  eccentric  actoi  who,  under 
somewhat  similar  circumstances,  asked  indignantly, 
"Then,  sir,  how  dare  you  advance  a  statement  in  a 
public  room  which  you  are  not  prepared  to  substan- 
tiate with  a  bet?" 

Monsey  was  a  Unitarian,  and  not  at  all  backward  to 
avow  his  creed.  As  he  was  riding  in  Hyde  Park  with 
a  Mr.  Robinson,  that  gentleman,  after  deploring  the 
eorrupt  morals  of  the  age,  said,  with  very  bad  taste, 
"But,  Doctor,  I  talk  with  one  who  believes  there  is  no 
God."  "And  I,"  retorted  Monsey,  "with  one  who 
believes  there  are  three."  Good  Mr.  Robinson  was  so 
horrified  that  he  clapped  spurs  to  his  horse,  galloped 
off,  and  never  spoke  to  the  doctor  again. 

Monsey 's  "WMggism  introduced  him  to  high  society, 
but  not  to  lucrative  practice.  Sir  Robert  "Walpolo 
always  extoled  the  merits  of  his  "Norfolk  Doctor," 
but  never  advanced  his  interests.  Instead  of  cover- 
ing the  great  minister  with  adulation,  Monsey  treated 
him  like  an  ordinary  individual,  telling  him  when  his 
jokes  were  poor,  and  not  hesitating  to  worst  him  in 
argument.  "How  happens  it,"  asked  Sir  Robert, 
over  his  wine,  "that  nobody  will  beat  me  at  billiards, 
or  contradict  me,  but  Dr.  Monsey?"  "Other  peo- 
ple," put  in  the  doctor,  "get  places— I  get  a  dinner 
and  praise."  The  Duke  of  Grafton  treated  him  even 
worse.  His  Grace  staved  off  paying  the  physician  his 
bill  for  attending  him  and  his  family  at  Windsor, 
with  promises  of  a  place.  ^\%en  "the  little  place" 
fell  vacant,  Monsey  called  on  the  duke,  and  reminded 
him  of  his  promise.  "Ecod— ecod— ecod,"  was  the 
answer,  "but  the  Chamberlain  has  just  been  here  to 
tell  me  he  has  promised  it  to  Jack ."    When  the 


318  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

disappointed  applicant  told  the  lord-chamberlain 
what  had  transpired,  his  Lordship  replied,  "Don't, 
for  the  world,  tell  his  Grace;  but  before  he  knew  I 
had  promised  it,  here  is  a  letter  he  sent  me,  soliciting 
for  a  third  person." 

Amongst  the  vagaries  of  this  eccentric  physician 
was  the  way  in  which  he  extracted  his  own  teeth. 
Round  the  tooth  sentenced  to  be  drav\Ti  he  fastened 
securely  a  strong  piece  of  catgut,  to  the  opposite  end 
of  which  he  affixed  a  bullet.  "With  this  bullet  and  a 
full  measure  of  powder  a  pistol  was  charged.  On  the 
trigger  being  pulled,  the  operation  was  performed 
effectually  and  speedily.  The  doctor  could  only 
rarely  prevail  on  his  friends  to  permit  him  to  remove 
their  teeth  by  this  original  process.  Once  a  gentle- 
man who  had  agreed  to  try  the  novelty,  and  had  even 
allowed  the  apparatus  to  be  adjusted,  at  the  last 
moment  exclaimed,  "Stop,  stop,  I've  changed  my 
mind!"  "But  I  haven't,  and  you're  a  fool  and  a 
coward  for  your  pains,"  answered  the  doctor,  pulling 
the  trigger.  In  another  instant  the  tooth  was  ex- 
tracted, much  to  the  timid  patient's  delight  and 
astonishment. 

At  Chelsea,  to  the  last,  the  doctor  saw  on  friendly 
terms  all  the  distinguisihed  medical  men  of  his  day. 
Cheselden,  fonder  of  having  his  horses  admired  than 
his  professional  skill  extolled,  as  Pope  and  Freind 
knew,  was  his  frequent  visitor.  He  had  also  his  loves. 
To  Mrs.  Montague,  for  many  years,  he  presented  a 
copy  of  verses  on  the  anniversary  of  her  birth-day. 
But  after  his  quarrel  with  Garrick,  he  saw  but  little 
of  the  lady,  and  was  rarely,  if  ever,  a  visitor  at  her 
magnificent  house  in  Portman  Square.     Another  of 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  319 

his  flames,  too,  was  Miss  Berry,  of  whom  the  loss  still 
seems  to  be  recent.  In  his  old  age,  avarice— the  very 
same  failing  he  condemned  so  much  in  Garrick— de- 
veloped itself  in  Monsey.  In  comparatively  early  life 
his  mind  was  in  a  flighty  state  about  money  matters. 
For  years  he  was  a  victim  of  that  incredulity  which 
makes  the  capitalist  imagine  a  great  and  prosperous 
country  to  be  the  most  insecure  of  all  debtors.  He 
preferred  investing  his  money  in  any  wild  specula- 
tion to  confiding  it  to  the  safe  custody  of  the  funds. 
Even  his  ready  cash  he  for  long  could  not  bring  him- 
self to  trust  in  the  hands  of  a  banker.  When  he  left 
town  for  a  trip,  he  had  recourse  to  the  most  absurd 
schemes  for  the  protection  of  his  money.  Before  set- 
ting out,  on  one  occasion,  for  a  journey  to  Norfolk, 
incredulous  with  regard  to  cash-boxes  and  bureaus, 
he  hid  a  considerable  quantity  of  gold  and  notes  in 
the  fireplace  of  his  study,  covering  them  up  artistic- 
ally with  cinders  and  shavings.  A  month  afterwards, 
returning  (luckily  a  few  days  before  he  was  expec- 
ted), he  found  his  old  house-maid  preparing  to  enter- 
tain a  few  friends  at  tea  in  her  master's  room.  The 
hospitable  domestic  was  on  the  point  of  lighting  the 
fire,  and  had  just  applied  a  candle  to  the  doctor's 
notes,  when  he  entered  the  room,  seized  on  a  pail  of 
water  that  chanced  to  be  standing  near,  and,  throw- 
ing its  contents  over  the  fuel  and  the  old  woman,  ex- 
tinguished the  fire  and  her  presence  of  mind  at  the 
same  time.  Some  of  the  notes,  as  it  was,  were  injured, 
and  the  Bank  of  England  made  objections  to  cashing 
them. 

To  the  last  Monsey  acted  by  his  own  rules  instead 
of  by  those  of  other  people.    He  lived  to  extreme  old 


320  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

age,  dying  in  his  rooms  in  Chelsea  College,  on  Decem- 
ber 26th,  1788,  in  his  ninety-fifth  year;  and  his  will 
was  as  remarkable  as  any  other  feature  of  his  career. 
To  a  young  lady  mentioned  in  it,  with  the  most  lav- 
ish encomiums  on  her  wit,  taste,  and  elegance,  was 
left  an  old  battered  suuff-box— not  worth  sixpence; 
and  to  another  young  lady,  whom  the  testator  says  he 
intended  to  have  enriched  with  a  handsome  legacy,  he 
leaves  the  gratifying  assurance  that  he  changed  his 
mind  on  finding  her  "a  pert,  conceited  minx."  After 
inveighing  against  bishops,  deans,  and  chapters,  he 
left  an  annuity  to  two  clergymen  who  had  resigned 
their  preferment  on  account  of  the  Athanasian  doc- 
trine. He  directed  that  his  body  should  not  be  in- 
sulted with  any  funeral  ceremony,  but  sihould  un- 
dergo dissection;  after  which,  the  "remainder  of  my 
carcase"  (to  use  his  own  words)  "may  be  put  into  a 
hole,  or  crammed  into  a  box  with  holes,  and  thrown 
into  the  Thames."  In  obedience  to  this  part  of  the 
will,  Jlr.  Forster,  surgeon,  of  Union  Court,  Broad 
Street,  dissected  the  body,  and  delivered  a  lecture  on 
it  to  the  medical  students  in  the  theatre  of  Guy's 
Hospital.  The  bulk  of  the  doctor's  fortune,  amount- 
ing to  about  £16,000,  was  left  to  his  only  daughter 
for  life,  and  after  her  demise,  by  a  complicated  entail, 
to  her  female  descendants.  This  only  child,  Charlotte 
Monsey,  married  William  Alexander,  a  linen-draper 
in  Cateaton  Street,  City,  and  had  a  numerous  family. 
One  of  her  daughters  married  the  Rev.  Edmund 
Rolfe,  rector  of  Cockley  Clay,  Norfolk,  of  which 
union  Robert  Monsey  Rolfe,  Baron  Cranworth  of 
Cranworth,  county  of  Norfolk,  is  the  offspring. 
Before  making  the  above-named  and  final  disposi- 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  321 

tion  of  his  body,  the  old  man  found  vent  for  his  fero- 
cious cynicism  and  vulgar  infidelity  in  the  following 
epitaph,  which  is  scarcely  less  characteristic  of  the 
society  in  which  the  writer  had  lived,  than  it  is  of  the 
writer  himself:— 

"mounsey's  epitaph,  vfkitten  by  himself." 

"Here  lie  my  old  bones;  my  vexation  now  ends; 
I  have  lived  much  too  long  for  myself  and  my  friends. 
As  to  churches  and  churchyards,  which  men  may  call  holy, 
'Tis  a  rank  piece  of  priestcraft,  and  founded  on  folly. 
What  the  next  world  may  be  never  troubled  my  pate; 
And  be  what  it  may,  I  beseech  you,  O  fate, 
When  the  bodies  of  millions  rise  up  in  a  riot, 
To  let  the  old  carcase  of  Mounsey  be  quiet." 

Unpleasant  old  scamp  though  he  in  many  respects 
was,  Monsey  retains  even  at  this  day  so  firm  a  hold  of 
the  affections  of  all  students  who  like  ferreting  into 
the  social  history  of  the  last  century,  that  no  chance 
letter  of  his  writing  is  devoid  of  interest.  The  follow- 
ing specimen  of  his  epistolary  style,  addressed  to  his 
fair  patient,  the  accomplished  and  celebrated  Mrs. 
Montague  (his  acquaintance  with  which  lady  has 
already  been  alluded  to),  is  transcribed  from  the 
original  manuscript  in  the  possession  of  Dr.  Dia- 
mond :— 

"4th  of  March,  a  minute  past  12. 

"Dear  Madame, 

"Now  dead  men's  ghosts  are  getting  out 
of  their  graves,  and  there  comes  the  ghost  of  a  doctor 
in  a  white  sheet  to  wait  upon  you.  Tour  Tokay  is  got 
into  my  head  and  your  love  into  my  heart,  and  they 
both  join  to  club  their  thanks  for  the  pleasantest  day 
I  have  spent  these  seven  years;  and  to  my  comfort  I 
find  a  man  may  be  in  love,  and  be  happy,  provided 
he  does  not  go  to  book  for  it.     I  could  have  trusted 


322  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

till  the  morning  to  show  my  gratitude,  but  the  Tokay 
wou'd  have  evaporated,  and  then  I  might  have  had 
nothing  to  talk  of  but  an  ache  in  my  head  and  pain 
in  my  heart.  Bacchus  and  Cupid  should  always  be 
together,  for  the  young  gentleman  is  very  apt  to  be 
silly  when  he's  alone  by  himself;  but  when  old  toss- 
pot is  with  him,  if  he  pretends  to  fall  a  whining,  he 
hits  him  a  cursed  knock  on  the  pate,  and  says:  'Drink 
about,  you  . . . . '  'No,  Bacchus,  don't  be  in  a  passion. 
Upon  my  soul  you  have  knocked  out  one  of  my  eyes ! ' 
'Eyes,  ye  scroundrel?     AVhy,  you  have  never  had  one 

since  you  were  born Apollo  would  have  couched 

you,  but  your  mother  said  no;  for  then,  says  she,  "he 
can  never  be  blamed  for  his  shot,  any  more  than  tihe 
people  that  are  shot  at."  She  knew  'twould  bring 
grist  to  her  mill ;  for  what  with  those  who  pretended 
they  were  in  love  and  were  not  so,  and  those  who  were 
really  so  and  wouldn't  own  it,  I  shall  find  rantum 
scantum  work  at  Cyprus,  Paphos,  and  Cythera. 
Some  will  come  to  acquire  what  they  never  had,  and 
others  to  get  rid  of  what  they  find  very  troublesome, 
and  I  shall  mind  none  of  'em. '  You  see  how  the  god- 
dess foresaw  and  predicted  my  misfortunes.  She 
knew  I  was  a  sincere  votary,  and  that  I  was  a  martyr 
to  her  serene  influence.  Then  how  could  you  use  me 
60  like  an  Hyrcanian  tygress,  and  be  such  an  infidel 
to  misery;  that  though  I  hate  you  mortally,  I  wish 
you  may  feel  but  one  poor  half-quarter-of-an-hour 
before  you  slip  your  breath— how  shall  I  rejoice  at 
your  horrid  agonies!  Nee  enim  lex  justior  ulla  Quam 
necis  artifices  arte  perire  swd— Remember  Me. 

"My  ills  have  disturbed  my  brain,  and  the  revival 
of  old  ideas  has  set  it  a-boyling,   that,  till  I   have 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  323 

skim'd  off  the  froth,  I  can't  pretend  to  say  a  word  for 
myself;  and  by  the  time  I  have  cleared  off  the  scum, 
the  little  grudge  that  is  left  may  be  burnt  to  the  bot- 
tom of  the  pot. 

"My  mortal  injuries  have  turned  my  mind. 
And  I  could  hate  myself  for  being  blind 
But  why  should  I  thus  rave  of  eyes  and  looks? 
All  I  have  felt  is  fancy — all  from  Books. 
I  stole  my  charmers  from  the  cuts  of  Quarles, 
And  my  dear  Clarissa  from  the  grand  Sir  Charles. 
But  if  his  mam  or  Cupid  live  above, 
Who  have  revenge  in  store  for  injured  love, 
O  Venus,  send  dire  ruin  on  her  head, 
Strike  the  Destroyer,  lay  the  Victress  dead ; 
Kill  the  Triumphress,  and  avenge  my  wrong 
In  height  of  pomp,  while  she  is  warm  and  young. 
Grant  I  may  stand  and  dart  her  with  my  eyes 
While  in  the  fiercest  pangs  of  life  she  lies. 
Pursue  her  sportive  soul  and  shoot  it  as  it  flies. 
And  cry  with  joy — There  Montague  lies  flat, 
Who  wronged  my  passion  with  her  barbarous  Chat, 
And  was  as  cruel  as  a  Cat  to  Rat, 
As  cat  to  rat — ay,  ay,  as  cat  to  rat. 
And  when  you  got  her  up  into  your  house, 
Clinch  yr,  fair  fist,  and  give  her  such  a  souse : 
There,  Hussy,  take  you  that  for  all  your  Prate, 
Your  barbarous  heart  I  do  a-bo-mi-nate. 
I'll  take  your  part,  my  dearest  faithful  Doctor! 
I've  told  my  son,  and  see  how  he  has  mockt  her ! 
He'll  fire  ht-  soul  and  make  her  rant  and  rave ; 
See  how  she  groans  to  be  old  Vulcan's  slave. 
The  fatal  bow  is  bent.     Shoot,  Cupid,  shoot. 
And  there's  your  Montague  all  over  soot. 
Now  say  no  more  my  little  Boy  is  blind. 
For  sure  this  tyrant  he  has  paid  m  kind. 
She  fondly  thought  to  captivate  a  lord. 
A  lord,  sweet  queen?    'Tis  true,  upon  my  word. 
And  what's  his  name?     His  name?    Why — 
And  thought  her  parts  and  wit  the  feat  had  done. 
But  he  had  parts  and  wit  as  well  as  she. 
Why  then,  'tis  strange  those  folks  did  not  agree. 
Agree?  Why,  had  she  lived  one  moment  longer. 
His  love   was   strong,  but  madam's   grew  much   stronger. 

Hiatus  valde  deAenduj. 
So  for  her  long  neglect  of  Venus'  altar 
I  changed  Cu's  Bowstring  to  a  silken  Halter; 


324  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

I  made  the  noose,  and  Cupid  drew  the  knot. 
Dear  mam !  says  he,  don't  let  her  lie  and  rot, 
She  is  too  pretty.     Hold  your  tongue,  you  sot ! 
The  pretty  blockhead?     None  of  yr.  rogue's  tricks. 
Ask  her,   she'll  own  she's  turned  of  thirty-six. 
I  was  but  twenty  when  I  got  the  apple, 
And  let  me  tell  you,  'twas  a  cursed  grapple. 
Had  I  but  staid  till  I  was  twenty-five, 
I'ad  surely  lost  it,  as  you're  now  alive! 
Paris  had  said  to  Juno  and  Minerva, 
Ladies,  I'm  yours,  and  shall  be  glad  to  serve  yer; 
I  must  have  bowed  to  wisdom  and  to  power. 
-"Vnd  Trov  had  stood  it  to  this  very  hour, 
Homer  had  never  wrote,  nor  wits  had  read 
Achilles'  anger  or  Patroclus  dead. 
We  gods  and  goddesses  had  lived  in  riot. 
And  the  blind  fool  had  let  us  all  be  quiet. 
Mortals  had  never  been  stunn'd  with   !!!!!!! — 
Nor  Virgil's  wooden  horse  play'd  Hocus   Focus. 
Hang  the  two  Bards !  But  Montague  is  pretty. 
Sirrah,  you  lie;  but  I'll  allow  she's  witty. 
Well !  but  I'm  told  she  was  so  at  fifteen, 
.'Xy,  and  the  veriest  so  that  e'er  was  seen. 
Why  that  I  own ;  and  I  myself 

"But,  hold !  as  in  all  probability  I  am  going  to  tell 
a  parcel  of  cui-sed  lies,  I'll  travel  no  further,  lay 
down  my  presumptuous  pen,  and  go  to  bed;  for  it's 
half-past  two,  and  two  hours  and  an  half  is  full  long 
enough  to  write  nonsense  at  one  time.  You  see  what 
it  is  to  give  a  Goth  Tokay:  you  manure  your  land 
with  filth,  and  it  produces  Tokay;  you  enrich  a  man 
with  Tokay,  and  he  brings  forth  the  froth  and  filth 
of  nonsense.  You  will  learn  how  to  bestow  it  better 
another  time.  I  hope  what  you  took  yourself  had  a 
better,  or  at  least  no  bad,  effect.  I  wish  you  had 
wrote  me  a  note  after  your  first  sleep.  There  wou'd 
have  been  your  sublime  double-distilled,  treble-refined 
wit.  I  shouldn't  have  known  it  to  be  yours  if  it 
could  'have  been  anybody's  else. 

"Pray  don't  show  these  'humble  rhimes  to  R— y. 
That  puppy  will   write  notes  upon   'em  or  perhaps 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  325 

paint  'em  upon  sign-posts,  and  make  'em  into  an  in- 
vitation to  draw  people  to  see  the  Camel  and  Drome- 
dary—for I  see  he  can  make  anything  of  anything; 
but,  after  all,  why  should  I  be  afraid?  Perhaps  he 
might  make  something  of  nothing.  I  have  wrote  in 
heroics.  Sure  the  wretch  will  have  a  reverence  for 
heroics,  especially  for  such  as  he  never  saw  before, 
and  never  may  again.  Well,  upon  my  life  I  will  go 
to  bed— 'tis  a  burning  shame  to  sit  up  so.  I  lie,  for 
my  fire  is  out,  and  so  will  my  candle  too  if  I  write  a 
word  more. 
"So  I  will  onlj'  make  my  mark.  X 

"God  eternally  bless  and  preserve  you  from  such 
writers." 

"March  5th,  12  o'clock. 

■  ■  Dear  Mes.  Montague, 

"My  fever  has  been  so  great  that  I  have  not  had 
any  time  to  write  to  you  in  such  a  manner  as  to  try 
and  convince  you  that  I  had  recovered  my  senses,  and 
I  could  write  a  sober  line.  Pray,  how  do  you  do  after 
your  wine  and  its  effects  on  you,  as  well  as  upon  me? 
You  are  grown  a  right  down  rake,  and  I  never  expect 
you  for  a  patient  again  as  long  as  we  live,  the  last 
relation  I  should  like  to  stand  to  you  in,  and  which 
nothing  could  make  bearable  but  serving  you,  and 
that  is  a  J 'ay  pays  for  all  my  misery  in  serving  you 
ill. 

' '  I  am  called  out,  so  adieu. ' ' 

"March  6th. 

' '  How  do  you  stand  this  flabby  weather  ?  I  tremble 
to  hear,  but  want  to  hear  of  all  things.  If  you  have 
done  with  my  stupid  West  India  Ly.,  pray  send  'em, 
for  they  go  to-morrow  or  next  day  at  latest.     'Tis 


326  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

•hardly  worth  while  to  trouble  Ld  L  with  so  much 
chaff  and  so  little  wheat— then  why  you? 

"Very  true.  'Tis  a  sad  thing  to  have  to  do  with  a 
fool,  who  can't  keep  his  nonsense  to  himself.  You 
know  I  am  a  rose,  but  I  have  terrible  prickles.  Dear 
madam,  adieu.  Pray  God  I  may  hear  you  are  well,  or 
that  He  will  enable  me  to  make  you  so,  for  you  must 
not  be  sick  or  die.  I'll  find  fools  and  rogues  enough 
to  be  that  for  you,  that  are  good  for  nothing  else,  and 
hardly,  very  hardly,  good  enougih  for  that.  Adieu, 
Adieu!  I  say  Adieu,  Adieu. 

"M.  M." 

Truly  did  Dr.  Messenger  Monsey  understand  the 
art  of  writing  a  long  letter  about  nothing. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

AKENSIDE. 

There  were  two  Akensides— Akenside  the  poet,  and 
Akenside  the  man;  and  of  the  man  Akenside  there 
were  numerous  subdivisions.  Remarkable  as  a  poet, 
he  was  even  yet  more  noteworthy  a  private  individual 
in  his  extreme  inconsistency.  No  character  is  more 
commonplace  than  the  one  to  which  is  ordinarily  ap- 
plied the  word  contradictory;  but  Akenside  was  a 
curiosity  from  the  extravagance  in  which  this  form 
of  "the  commonplace"  exihibited  itself  in  his  dis- 
position and  manners. 

By  turns  he  was  placid,  irritable,  simple,  affected, 
gracious,  haughty,  magnanimous,  mean,  benevolent, 
harsh,  and  sometimes  even  brutal.  At  times  he  was 
marked  by  a  childlike  docility,  and  at  other  times  his 
vanity  and  arrogance  displayed  him  almost  as  a  mad- 
man. Of  plebeian  extraction,  he  was  ashamed  of  his 
origin,  and  yet  was  throughout  life  the  champion  of 
popular  interests.  Of  his  real  humanity  there  can 
be  no  doubt,  and  yet  in  his  demeanour  to  the  un- 
fortunate creatures  whom,  in  his  capacity  of  a  hos- 
pital-physician, he  had  to  attend,  he  was  always 
supercilious,  and  often  cruel. 


328  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

Like  Byron,  he  was  lame,  one  of  his  legs  being 
shorter  than  the  other ;  and  of  this  personal  disfigure- 
ment he  was  even  more  sensitive  than  was  the  author 
of  "Childe  Harold"  of  his  deformity.  When  his 
eye  fell  on  it  he  would  blush,  for  it  reminded  him  of 
the  ignoble  condition  in  which  he  waa  born.  His 
father  was  a  butcher  at  Newcastle-upon-Tyne;  and 
one  of  his  cleavers,  falling  from  the  shop-block,  had 
irremediabh'  injured  the  poet's  foot,  when  he  was 
still  a  little  child. 

Akenside  was  not  only  the  son  of  a  butcher— but, 
worse  still,  a  Nonconformist  butcher;  and  from  an 
early  period  of  his  life  he  was  destined  to  be  a  sec- 
tarian minister.  In  his  nineteenth  year  he  was  sent 
to  Edinburgh  to  prosecute  his  theological  studies,  the 
expenses  of  this  educational  course  being  in  part  de- 
frayed by  the  Dissenters'  Society.  But  he  speedily 
discovered  that  he  had  made  a  wrong  start,  and  per- 
suaded his  father  to  refund  the  money  the  Society 
had  advanced,  and  to  be  himself  at  the  cost  of  edu- 
cating him  as  a  physician.  The  honest  tradesman 
was  a  liberal  and  affectionate  parent.  Mark  remained 
three  years  at  Edinburgh,  a  member  of  the  Medical 
Society,  and  an  industrious  student.  On  leaving 
Edinburgh  he  practised  for  a  short  time  as  a  surgeon 
at  Newcastle;  after  which  he  went  to  Leyden,  and 
having  spent  three  months  in  that  university  took 
his  degree  of  doctor  of  physic.  May  16,  1744.  At 
Leyden  he  became  warmly  attached  to  a  fellow- 
student  named  Dyson;  and  wonderful  to  be  related, 
the  two  friends,  notwithstanding  one  was  under 
heavy  pecuniary  obligations  to  the  other,  and  they 
were  very  unlike  each  other  in  some  of  their  principal 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  329 

characteristics,  played  the  part  of  Pylades  and 
Orestes,  even  into  the  Valley  of  Death.  Akenside 
was  poor,  ardent,  and  of  a  nervous,  poetic  tempera- 
ment. Dyson  was  rich,  sober,  and  matter-of-fact,  a 
prudent  place-holder.  He  rose  to  be  clerk  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  a  Lord  of  the  Treasury;  but 
the  atmosphere  of  political  circles  and  the  excitement 
of  public  life  never  caused  his  heart  to  forget  its  eai-ly 
attachment.  Whilst  the  poet  lived  Dyson  was  his 
munificent  patron,  and  when  death  had  stepped  in 
between  them,  his  literary  executor.  Indeed,  he  al- 
lowed him  for  years  no  less  a  sum  than  £300  per 
annum. 

Akenside  was  never  very  successful  as  a  physician, 
although  he  thoroughly  understood  his  profession, 
and  in  some  important  particulars  advanced  its 
science.  Dyson  introduced  him  into  good  society, 
and  recommended  him  to  all  his  friends;  but  the 
greatest  income  Akenside  ever  made  was  most  proba- 
bly less  than  what  he  obtained  from  his  friend 's  gen- 
erosity. Still,  he  must  have  earned  something,  for 
he  managed  to  keep  a  carriage  and  pair  of  horses; 
and  £300  per  annum,  although  a  hundred  yeai-s  ago 
that  sum  went  nearly  twice  as  far  as  it  would  now, 
could  not  have  supported  the  equipage.  His  want  of 
patients  can  easily  be  accounted  for.  He  was  a  vain, 
tempestuous,  crotchety  little  man,  little  qualified  to 
override  the  prejudices  which  vulgar  and  ignorant 
people  cherish  against  lawyers  and  physicians  who 
have  capacity  and  energy  enough  to  distinguish 
themselves  in  any  way  out  of  the  ordinary  track  of 
their  professional  duties. 

He  was  admitted,  by  mandamus,  lO  a  doctor's  de- 


330  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

gree  at  Cambridge ;  and  became  a  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society,  and  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  College  of  Phy- 
sicians. He  tried  his  luck  at  Northampton,  and 
found  he  was  not  needed  there ;  he  became  an  inhabi- 
tant of  Ilampstead,  but  failed  to  ingratiate  himself 
with  the  opulent  gentry  who  in  those  days  resided  in 
that  suburb;  and  lastly  fixed  himself  in  Bloomsbury 
Square  (setat.  27),  where  he  resided  till  his  death. 
After  some  delay,  he  became  a  physician  of  St. 
Thomas's  Hospital,  and  an  assistant  physician  of 
Christ's  Hospital— read  the  Gulstonian  Lectures  be- 
fore the  College  of  Physicians,  in  1755— and  was  also 
Krohnian  Lecturer.  In  speeches  and  papers  to 
learned  societies,  and  to  various  medical  treatises, 
amongst  which  may  be  mentioned  his  "De  Dysen- 
taria  Commentarius, "  he  tried  to  wheedle  himself 
into  practice.  But  his  efforts  were  of  no  avail.  Sir 
John  Hawkins,  in  his  absurd  Life  of  Dr.  Johnson, 
tells  a  good  story  of  Saxby's  rudeness  to  the  author 
of  the  "Pleasures  of  Imagination."  Saxby  was  a 
custom-house  clerk,  and  made  himself  liked  in  society 
by  saying  the  rude  things  which  other  people  had  the 
benevolence  to  feel,  but  lacked  the  hardihood  to  utter. 
One  evening,  at  a  party,  Akenside  argued,  with  much 
warmth  and  more  tediousness,  that  physicians  were 
better  and  wiser  men  than  the  world  ordinarily 
thouglit. 

' '  Doctor, ' '  said  Saxby,  ' '  after  all  you  have  said,  my 
opinion  of  the  profession  is  this:  the  ancients  en- 
deavoured to  make  it  a  science,  and  failed;  and  the 
moderns  to  make  it  a  trade,  and  succeeded." 

He  was  not  liked  at  St.  Thomas's  Hospital.  The 
gentle  Lettsom,  whose  mild  poetic  nature  had  sur- 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  331 

rounded  the  author  of  "The  Pleasures  of  Imagina- 
tion" with  a  halo  of  romantic  interest,  when  he  en- 
tered himself  a  student  of  that  school,  was  shocked  at 
finding  the  idol  of  his  admiration  so  irritable  and  im- 
kindly  a  man.  He  was,  according  to  Lettsom's  remi- 
niscences, thin  and  pale,  and  of  a  strumous  counte- 
nance. Ilis  injured  leg  was  lengthened  by  a  false 
heel.  In  dress  he  was  scrupulously  neat  and  delicate, 
always  having  on  his  head  a  well-powdered  white  wig, 
and  by  his  side  a  long  sword.  Any  want  of  respect  to 
him  threw  him  into  a  fit  of  anger.  One  amongst  the 
students  who  accompanied  him  on  a  certain  occasion 
round  the  wards  spat  on  the  floor  behind  the  physi- 
cian. Akenside  turned  sharply  on  his  heel,  and  de- 
manded who  it  was  that  dared  to  spit  in  his  face.  To 
the  poor  women  who  applied  to  him  for  medical  ad- 
vice he  exhibited  his  dislike  in  the  most  offensive  and 
cruel  manner.  The  students  who  watched  him 
closely,  and  knew  the  severe  disappointment  his  affec- 
tions had  suffered  in  early  life,  whispered  to  the 
novice  that  the  poet-physician's  moroseness  to  his 
female  patients  was  a  consequence  of  his  having  felt 
the  goads  of  despised  love.  The  fastidiousness  of  the 
little  fellow  at  having  to  come  so  closely  in  contact 
with  the  vulgar  rabble,  induced  him  sometimes  to 
make  the  stronger  patients  precede  him  with  brooms 
and  clear  a  way  for  him  through  the  crowd  of  dis- 
eased wretches.  Bravo,  my  butcher's  boy !  This  story 
of  Akenside  and  his  lictors,  pushing  back  the  un- 
sightly mob  of  lepers,  ought  to  be  read  side  by  side 
with  that  of  the  proud  Duke  of  Somerset,  who,  when 
on  a  journey,  used  to  send  outriders  before  him  to 


332  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

clear  the  roads,  and  prevent  vulgar  eyes  from  looking 
at  him. 

On  one  occasion  Akenside  ordered  an  unfortunate 
male  patient  of  St.  Thomas's  to  take  boluses  of  bark. 
The  poor  fellov/  complained  that  he  could  not  swal- 
low them.  Akenside  was  so  incensed  at  the  man's 
presuming  to  have  an  opinion  on  the  subject,  that  he 
ordered  him  to  be  turned  out  of  the  hospital,  saying, 
"He  shall  not  die  under  my  care."  A  man  who 
would  treat  his  poor  patients  in  this  way  did  not  de- 
serve to  have  any  rich  ones.  These  excesses  of  folly 
and  brutality,  however,  ere  long  reached  the  ears  of 
honest  Richard  Chester,  one  of  the  governors,  and 
that  good  fellow  gave  the  doctor  a  good  scolding, 
roundly  telling  him,  "Know,  thou  art  a  servant  of 
this  charity." 

Akenside 's  self-love  received  a  more  humorous  stab 
than  the  poke  administered  by  Riehard  Chester's 
blunt  cudgel,  from  Mr.  Baker,  one  of  the  surgeons  at 
St.  Thomas's.  To  appreciate  the  full  force  of  the 
story,  the  reader  must  recollect  that  the  jealousy, 
which  still  exists  between  the  two  branches  of  the 
medical  profession,  was  a  century  since  so  violent 
that  even  considerations  of  interest  failed  in  some 
cases  to  induce  eminent  surgeons  and  phy.sicians  to 
act  together.  One  of  Baker's  sons  was  the  victim 
of  epilepsy,  and  frequent  fits  had  impaired  his  facul- 
ties. Baker  was  naturally  acutely  sensitive  of  his 
child's  misfortune,  and  when  Akenside  had  the  bad 
taste  to  ask  to  what  study  the  affiicted  lad  intended  to 
apply,  the  father  answered,  "I  find  he  is  not  capable 
of  making  a  surgeon,  so  I  have  sent  him  to  Edinburgh 
to  make  a  physician  of  him."    Akenside  felt  this  sar- 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  333 

casm  so  much,  that  he  for  a  long  time  afterward  re- 
fused to  hold  any  intercourse  with  Baker. 

But  Akenside  had  many  excuses  for  his  irritability. 
He  was  very  ambitious,  and  failed  to  achieve  that  suc- 
cess which  the  possession  of  great  powers  warranted 
him  in  regarding  as  his  due.  It  was  said  of  Garth 
that  no  physician  understood  his  art  more,  or  his 
trade  less !  and  this,  as  Mr.  Bucke,  in  his  beautiful 
"Life  of  Arkenside,"  remarks,  was  equally  true  of 
the  doctor  of  St.  Thomas's.  He  had  a  thirst  for 
human  praise  and  worldly  success,  and  a  tempera- 
ment that  caused  him,  notwithstanding  all  his  sar- 
casms against  love,  to  estimate  at  their  full  worth  the 
joys  of  married  life;  yet  he  lived  all  his  days  a  poor 
man,  and  died  a  bachelor.  Other  griefs  also  contrib- 
uted to  sour  his  temper.  His  lot  was  cast  in  times  that 
could  not  justly  appreciate  his  literary  excellences. 
His  sincere  admiration  of  classic  literature  and  art 
and  manners  was  regarded  by  the  coarse  herd  of  rich 
and  stupid  Londoners  as  so  perfectly  ridiculous,  that 
when  Smollett  had  the  bad  taste  to  introduce  him 
into  Peregrine  Pickle,  as  the  physician  who  gives  a 
dinner  after  the  manner  of  the  ancients,  the  applause 
was  general,  and  every  city  tradesman,  with  scholar- 
ship enough  to  read  the  novel,  had  a  laugh  at  the  ex- 
pense of  a  man  who  has  some  claims  to  be  regarded 
as  the  greatest  literary  genius  of  his  time.  The  pol- 
ished and  refined  circles  of  English  life  paid  homage 
to  his  genius,  but  even  in  them  he  failed  to  meet  with 
the  cordial  recognition  he  deserved.  Johnson,  though 
he  placed  him  above  Gray  and  Mason,  did  not  do  him 
justice.  Bos  well  didn't  see  much  in  him.  Horace 
Walpole  differed  from  the  friend  who  asked  him  to 


334  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

admire  the  "Pleasures  of  Imagination."  T'he  poets 
and  wits  of  his  own  time  had  a  high  respect  for  his 
critical  opinion,  and  admitted  the  excellence  of  his 
poetry— but  almost  invariably  with  some  qualifica- 
tion. And  Akenside  was  one  who  thirsted  for  the 
complete  assent  of  the  applauding  world.  He  died 
after  a  brief  illness  in  his  forty-ninth  year,  on  the 
23rd  of  June,  1770;  and  we  doubt  not,  when  the 
Angel  of  Death  touched  him,  the  heart  that  ceased  to 
beat  was  one  that  had  known  much  sorrow. 

Akenside 's  poetical  career  was  one  of  unfulfilled 
promise.  At  the  age  of  twenty-three  he  had  written 
"The  Pleasures  of  the  Imagination."  Pope  was  so 
struck  with  the  merits  of  the  poem,  that  when  Dods- 
ley  consulted  him  about  the  price  set  on  it  by  the 
author  (£120),  he  told  him  to  make  no  niggardly 
offer,  for  it  was  the  work  of  no  every-day  writer.  But 
he  never  produced  another  great  work.  Impressed 
with  the  imperfections  of  his  achievement,  he  occu- 
pied himself  with  incessantly  touching  and  re-touch- 
ing it  up,  till  he  came  to  the  unwise  determination  of 
re-writing  it.  He  did  not  live  to  accomplish  this  sui- 
cidal task;  but  the  portion  of  it  which  came  to  the 
public  was  inferior  to  the  original  poem,  both  in 
power  and  art. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

LETTSOM. 

High  amongst  literary,  and  higher  yet  amongst 
benevolent,  physicians  must  be  ranked  John  Coakley 
Lettsom,  formerly  president  of  the  Philosophical 
Society  of  London.  A  "West  Indian,  and  the  son  of  a 
planter,  he  was  born  on  one  of  his  father's  little 
islands,  Van  Dyke,  near  Tortola,  in  the  year  1744. 
Though  bred  a  Quaker,  he  kept  his  heart  so  free  from 
sectarianism,  and  his  life  so  entirely  void  of  the  for- 
mality and  puritanic  asceticism  of  the  Friends,  that 
his  ordinary  acquaintance  marvelled  at  his  continu- 
ing to  wear  the  costume  of  the  brotherhood.  At  six 
years  of  age  he  was  sent  to  England  for  education, 
being  for  that  purpose  confided  to  the  protection  of 
Mr.  Pothergill,  of  Warrington,  a  Quaker  minister, 
and  younger  brother  of  Dr.  John  Fothergill.  After 
receiving  a  poor  preparatory  education,  he  was  ap- 
prenticed to  a  Yorkshire  apothecary,  named  Sutcliffe, 
who,  by  industry  and  intelligence,  had  raised  himself 
from  the  position  of  a  weaver  to  that  of  the  first  med- 
ical practitioner  of  Settle.  In  the  last  century  a  West 
Indian  was,  to  the  inhabitants  of  a  provincial  district, 
a  rare  curiosity;  and  Sutcliffe 's  surgery,  on  the  day 


336  A  BOOK  AJ30UT   DOCTOES. 

that  Lettsom  entered  it  in  his  fifteenth  year,  was  sur- 
rounded by  a  dense  crowd  of  gaping  rustics,  anxious 
to  see  a  young  gentleman  accustomed  to  walk  on  his 
head.  This  extraordinary  demonstration  of  curiosity 
was  owing  to  the  merry  humour  of  Suteliffe's  senior 
apprentice,  who  had  informed  the  people  that  the 
new  pupil,  who  would  soon  join  him,  came  from  a 
country  where  the  feet  of  the  inhabitants  were  placed 
in  an  exactly  opposite  direction  to  those  of  English- 
men. 

Sutcliffe  did  not  find  his  new  apprentice  a  very 
handy  one.  "Thou  mayest  make  a  physician,  but  I 
think  not  a  good  apothecary,"  the  old  man  was  in  the 
habit  of  saying;  and  the  prediction  in  due  course 
turned  out  a  correct  one.  Having  served  an  appren- 
ticeship of  five  years,  and  walked  for  two  the  wards 
of  St.  Thomas's  Hospital,  where  Akenside  was  a  phy- 
sician, conspicuous  for  supercilious  manner  and  want 
of  feeling,  Lettsom  returned  to  the  "West  Indies,  and 
settled  as  a  medical  practitioner  in  Tortola.  He  prac- 
tised there  only  five  months,  earning  in  that  time  the 
astonishing  sum  of  £2000 ;  when,  ambitious  of  achiev- 
ing a  high  professional  position,  he  returned  to 
Europe,  visited  the  medical  schools  of  Paris  and 
Edinburgh,  took  his  degree  of  M.D.  at  Leyden  on  the 
20th  of  June,  1769,  was  admitted  a  licentiate  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Physicians  of  London  in  the  same 
year,  and  in  1770  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Society 
of  Antiquaries. 

Prom  this  period  till  his  death,  in  1815  (Nov.  20), 
he  was  one  of  the  most  prominent  figures  in  the  scien- 
tific world  of  London.  As  a  physician  he  was  a  most 
fortunate  man;  for  without  any  high  reputation  for 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  337 

professional  acquirements,  and  with  the  exact  reverse 
of  a  good  preliminary  education,  he  made  a  larger  in- 
come than  any  other  physician  of  the  same  time.  Dr. 
John  Pothergill  never  made  more  than  £5000  in  one 
year;  but  Lettsom  earned  £3600  in  1783— £3900  in 
1784-£4015  in  1785-and  £4500  in  1786.  After  that 
period  his  practice  rapidly  increased,  so  that  in  some 
years  his  receipts  were  as  much  as  £12,000.  But 
although  he  pocketed  such  large  sums,  half  his 
labours  were  entirely  gratuitous.  Necessitous  clergy- 
men and  literary  men  he  invariably  attended  with 
unusual  solicitude  and  attention,  but  without  ever 
taking  a  fee  for  his  services.  Indeed,  generosity  was 
the  ruling  feature  of  his  life.  Although  he  burdened 
himself  with  the  public  business  of  his  profession,  was 
so  incessantly  on  the  move  from  one  patient  to 
another  that  he  habitually  knocked  up  three  pairs  of 
horses  a-day,  and  had  always  some  literary  work  or 
other  upon  his  desk,  he  nevertheless  found  time  to  do 
an  amount  of  labour,  in  establishing  charitable  insti- 
tutions and  visiting  the  indigent  sick,  that  would  by 
itself  have  made  a  reputation  for  an  ordinary  person. 
To  give  the  mere  list  of  his  separate  benevolent 
services  would  be  to  write  a  book  about  them.  The 
General  Dispensary,  the  Pinsbury  Dispensary,  the 
Surrey  Dispensary,  and  the  Margate  Sea-bathing  In- 
firmary, originated  in  his  exertions;  an'd  he  was  one 
of  the  first  projectors  of— the  Philanthropic  Society, 
St.  Georges-in-the-Pields,  for  the  Prevention  of 
Crimes,  and  the  Reform  of  the  Criminal  Poor;  the 
Society  for  the  Discharge  and  Relief  of  Persons  Im- 
prisoned for  Small  Debts ;  the  Asylum  for  the  Indi- 
gent Deaf  and  Dumb ;  the  Institution  for  the  Relief 

4—22 


338  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

and  Employment  of  the  Indigent  Blind ;  and  the 
Royal  Humane  Society,  for  the  recovery  of  the  appar- 
ently drowned  or  dead.  And  year  by  year  his  pen 
sent  forth  some  publication  or  other  to  promote  the 
ivelfare  of  the  poor,  and  succour  the  afllieted.  Of 
course  there  were  crowds  of  clever  spectators  of  the 
world's  work,  who  smiled  as  the  doctor's  carriage 
passed  them  in  the  streets,  and  said  he  was  a  deuced 
clever  fellow  to  make  ten  thousand  a-year  so  easily; 
and  that,  after  all,  philanthropy  was  not  a  bad  trade. 
But  Lettsom  was  no  calculating  humanitarian,  with  a 
tongue  discoursing  eloquently  on  the  sufferings  of 
mankind,  and  an  eye  on  the  sharp  look-out  for  his 
own  interest.  What  he  was  before  the  full  stare  of 
the  world,  that  he  was  also  in  his  own  secret  heart, 
and  those  private  ways  into  which  hypocrisy  cannot 
enter.  At  the  outset  of  his  life,  when  only  twenty- 
three  years  old,  he  liberated  his  slaves— although  they 
constituted  almost  his  entire  worldly  wealth,  and  he 
was  anxious  to  achieve  distinction  in  a  profession 
that  offers  peculiar  difficulties  to  needy  aspirants. 
And  when  his  career  was  drawing  to  a  close,  he  had 
to  part  with  his  beloved  countryseat  because  he  had 
impoverished  himself  by  lavish  generosity  to  the  un- 
fortunate. 

There  was  no  sanctimonious  affectation  in  the 
man.  He  wore  a  drab  coat  and  gaiters,  and  made  the 
Quaker's  use  of  Thou  and  Thee;  but  he  held  himself 
altogether  apart  from  the  prejudices  of  his  sect.  A 
poet  himself  of  some  respectability,  he  delighted  in 
every  variety  of  literature,  and  was  ready  to  shake 
any  man  by  the  hand— Jew  or  Gentile.  He  liked  pic- 
tures and  works  of  sculpture,  and  spent  large  sums 


A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS.  339 

upon  them;  into  the  various  scientific  movements  of 
the  time  he  threw  himself  with  all  the  energy  of  his 
nature;  and  he  disbursed  a  fortune  in  surrounding 
himself  at  Camberwell  with  plants  from  the  tropics. 
He  liked  good  wine,  but  never  partook  of  it  to  excess, 
although  his  enemies  were  ready  to  suggest  that  he 
was  always  glad  to  avail  himself  of  an  excuse  for  get- 
ting intoxicated.  And  he  was  such  a  devoted  admirer 
of  the  fair  sex,  that  the  jealous  swarm  of  needy  men 
who  envied  him  his  prosperity,  had  some  countenance 
for  their  slander  that  he  wa.s  a  Quaker  debauchee. 
He  married  young,  and  his  wife  outlived  him ;  but  as 
a  husband  he  was  as  faithful  as  he  proved  in  every 
other  relation  of  life. 

Saturday  was  the  day  he  devoted  to  entertaining 
his  friends  at  Grove  Hill,  Camberwell;  and  rare  par- 
ties there  gathered  round  him— celebrities  from  every 
region  of  the  civilized  world,  and  the  best  "good  fel- 
lows" of  Loudon.  Boswell  was  one  of  his  most  fre- 
quent guests,  and,  in  an  ode  to  Charles  Dilly,  cele- 
brated the  beauties  of  the  physician's  seat  and  his 
humane  disposition  :— 

"My  cordial  Friend,  still  prompt  to  lend 

Your  cash  when   I  have  need  on't; 
We  both  must  bear  our  load  of  care — 
At  least  we  talk  and  read  on't. 

"Yet  are  we  gay  in  ev"ry  way, 

Not  minding  where  the  joke  lie; 
On  Saturday  at  bowls  we  play 
At  Camberwell  with  Coakley. 

"Methinks  you  laugh  to  hear  but  half 

The  name  of  Dr.  Lettsom ;  * 

From  him  of  good — talk,  liquors,  food— 
His  guests  will  always  get  some. 


340  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

"And  guests  has  he,  in  ev'ry  degree, 
Of  decent  estimation : 
His  liberal  mind  holds  all  mankind 
As  an  extended  Nation. 

"O'er  Lettsom's  cheer  we've  met  a  peer — 
A  peer — no  less  than  Lansdowne ! 
Of  whom  each  dull  and  envious  skull 
Absurdly  cries — 'The  man's  down !' 

"Down  do  they  say?    How  then,  I  pray. 
His  king  and  country  prize  him! 
Through  the  whole  world  known,  his  peace  alone 
Is   sure  t'   immortalize  him. 

"Lettsom  we  view  a  Quaker  true, 
'Tis  clear  he's  so  in  one  sense: 
His  spirit,  strong,  and  ever  young, 
Refutes  pert  Priestley's  nonsense. 

"In  fossils  he  is  deep,  we  see; 

Nor  knows  Beasts,  Fishes,  Birds  ill; 
With  plants  not  few,  some  from  Pelew, 
And  wondrous  Mangel  Wurzel ! 

"West  India  bred,  warm  heart,  cool  head, 
The  city's  first  physician ; 
By  schemes  humane — want,  sickness,  pain, 
To  aid  in  his  ambition. 

"From  terrace  high  he  feasts  his  eye. 
When  practice  grants  a  furlough ; 
And,  while  it  roves  o'er  Dulwich  groves. 
Looks  down — even  upon  Thurlow." 

The  concluding  line  is  an  allusion  to  the  Lord 
Chancellor's  residence  at  Dulwich. 

In  person,  Lettsom  was  tall  and  thin— indeed, 
almost  attenuated:  his  face  was  deeply  lined,  indi- 
cating firmness  quite  as  much  as  benevolence ;  and  his 
complexion  was  of  a  dark  yellow  hue.  His  eccentric- 
ities were  numerous.  Like  the  founder  of  his  sect,  he 
would  not  allow  even  respect  for  royalty  to  make  an 
alteration  in  his  costume  which  his  conscience  did  not 
approve;  and  George  III.,  who  entertained  a  warm 


A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  341 

regard  for  him,  allowed  him  to  appear  at  Court  in 
the  ordinary  Quaker  garb,  and  to  kiss  his  hand, 
though  he  had  neither  powder  on  his  head,  nor  a 
sword  by  his  side.  Lettsom  responded  to  his  sover- 
eign's courtesy  by  presenting  him  with  some  rare  and 
unpurchasable  medals. 

Though  his  writings  show  him  to  have  been  an  en- 
lightened physician  for  his  time,  his  system  of  prac- 
tice was  not  of  course  free  from  the  violent  measures 
which  were  universally  believed  in  during  the  last 
century.    He  used  to  say  of  himself, 

"When  patients  sick  to  me  apply, 

I  physics,  bleeds  and  sweats  'em; 
Then — if  they  choose  to  die, 
What's  that  to  me — I  lets  'em."— (I.  Lettsom.) 

But  his  prescriptions  were  not  invariably  of  a  kind 
calculated  to  depress  the  system  of  his  patient.  On 
one  occasion  an  old  American  merchant,  who  had  been 
ruined  by  the  rupture  between  the  colonies  and  the 
mother  country,  requested  his  attendance  and  pro- 
fessional advice.  The  unfortunate  man  was  seventy- 
four  years  of  age,  and  bowed  down  with  the  weight  of 
his  calamities. 

"Those  trees,  doctor,"  said  the  sick  man,  looking 
out  of  his  bed-room  window  over  his  lawn,  "I 
planted,  and  have  lived  to  see  some  of  them  too  old 
to  bear  fruit;  they  are  part  of  my  family:  and  my 
children,  still  dearer  to  me,  must  quit  this  residence, 
which  was  the  delight  of  my  youth,  and  the  hope  of 
my  old  age. ' ' 

The  Quaker  physician  was  deeply  affected  by  these 
pathetic  words,  and  the  impressive  tone  with  which 
they  were  uttered.  He  spoke  a  few  words  of  comfort, 
and  quitted  the  room,  leaving  on  the  table  as  his  pre- 


342  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

scription— a  cheque  for  a  large  sum  of  money.  Nor 
did  his  goodness  end  there.  lie  purchased  the  house 
of  his  patient's  creditors,  and  presented  it  to  him  for 
life. 

As  Lettsom  was  travelling  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
London,  a  highwayman  stopped  his  carriage,  and, 
putting  a  pistol  into  the  window,  demanded  him  to 
surrender  his  money.  The  faltering  voice  and  hesi- 
tation of  the  robber  showed  that  he  had  only  recently 
taken  to  his 'perilous  vocation,  and  his  appearance 
showed  him  to  be  a  young  man  who  had  moved  in  the 
gentle  ranks  of  life.  Lettsom  quickly  responded  that 
he  vras  sorry  to  see  such  a  well-looking  young  man 
pursuing  a  course  which  would  inevitably  bring  him 
to  ruin ;  that  he  would  give  him  freely  all  the  money 
he  had  about  him,  and  would  try  to  put  him  in  a 
better  way  of  life,  if  he  liked  to  call  on  him  in  the 
course  of  a  few  days.  As  the  doctor  said  this,  he 
gave  his  card  to  the  young  man,  who  turned  out  to 
be  another  victim  of  the  American  war.  He  had  only 
made  one  similar  attempt  on  the  road  before,  and 
had  been  driven  to  lawless  action  by  unexpected 
pennilessness.  Lettsom  endeavoured  in  vain  to  pro- 
cure aid  for  his  protege  from  the  commissioners  for 
relieving  the  American  sufferers;  but  eventually  the 
Queen,  interested  in  the  young  man's  case,  presented 
him  with  a  commission  in  the  army;  and  in  a  brief 
military  career,  that  was  cut  short  by  yellow  fever 
in  the  "West  Indies,  he  distinguished  himself  so  much 
that  his  name  appeared  twice  in  the  Gazette. 

On  one  of  his  benevolent  excursions  the  doctor 
found  his  way  into  the  squalid  garret  of  a  poor 
woman  who  had  seen  better  days.     "With  the  language 


A   BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS.  343 

and  deportment  of  a  lady  she  begged  the  physician  to 
give  her  a  prescription.  After  inquiring  carefully 
into  her  case,  he  wrote  on  a  slip  of  paper  to  the  over- 
seers of  the  parish— 

"A  shilling  per  diem  for  Mrs  Moreton.  Money, 
not  physic,  will  cure  her. 

"Lettsom." 

Of  all  Lettsom's  numerous  works,  including  his 
contributions  to  the  Gentleman's  Magazine,  under  the 
signature  of  "Mottles,"  the  anagram  of  his  own 
name,  the  one  most  known  to  the  general  reader,  is 
the  "History  of  some  of  the  Effects  of  Hard  Drink- 
ing." It  concludes  vrith  a  scale  of  Temperance  and 
Intemperance,  in  imitation  of  a  thermometer.  To 
each  of  the  two  conditions  seventy  degrees  are  al- 
lotted. Against  the  seventieth  (or  highest)  degree  of 
'iemperanee  is  marked  "Water,"  under  which,  at 
distances  of  ten  degrees,  follow  "Milk-and- Water," 
"Sm'all  Beer,"  "Cyder  and  Perry,"  "Wine,"  "Por- 
ter," "Strong  Beer."  The  tenth  degree  of  Intem- 
perance is  "Punch";  the  twentieth,  "Toddy  and 
Crank";  the  thirtieth,  "Grog  and  Brandy-and 
Water";  the  fortieth,  "Flip  and  Shrub";  the  fiftieth, 
"Bitters  infused  in  Spirits,  Usquebaugh,  Hysteric 
Water";  the  sixtieth,  "Gin,  Aniseed,  Brandy,  Rum, 
and  Whisky, ' '  in  the  morning ;  the  seventieth,  like  the 
sixtieth,  only  taken  day  and  night.  Then  follow,  in 
tabular  order,  the  vices,  diseases,  and  punishments  of 
the  different  stages  of  Intemperance.  The  mere 
enumeration  of  them  ought  to  keep  the  most  con- 
firmed toper  sober  for  the  rest  of  his  days:  — 

"Fices.— Idleness,  Peevishness,  Quarrelling,  Fight- 


344  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

ing,  Lying,  Swearing,  Obscenity,  Swindling,  Perjury, 
Burglary,  Murder,  Suicide. 

"Diseases.— Sickness,  Tremors  of  the  Hands  in  the 
Morning,  Bloatetlness,  Inflamed  Eyes,  Red  Nose  and 
Face,  Sore  and  Swelled  Legs,  Jaundice,  Pains  in  the 
Limbs,  Dropsy,  Epilepsy,  Melancholy,  Madness, 
Palsy,  Apoplexy,  Death. 

" Punishments.— Debt,  Black  Eyes,  Rags,  Hunger, 
Hospital,  Poor-house,  Jail,  "Whipping,  the  Hulks, 
Botany  Bay,  Gallows!" 

This  reads  like  Hogarth's  Gin  Lane. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

A  FEW  MORE  QUACKS. 

The  term  quack  is  applicable  to  all  who,  by  pompous  pre- 
tences, mean  insinuations,  and  indirect  promises,  endeavour 
to  obtain  that  confidence  to  which  neither  education,  merit, 
nor  experience  entitles  them. — Samuel  Parr's  Definition. 

Of  London's  modern  quacks,  one  of  the  most  daring 
was  James  Graham,  M.  D.,  of  Edinburgh,  who  in- 
troduced into  England  the  juggleries  of  Mesmer, 
profiting  by  them  in  this  country  scarcely  less  than 
his  master  did  on  the  Continent.  Ilis  brother  mar- 
ried Catherine  Macaulay,  the  author  of  the  immortal 
History  of  England,  which  no  one  now-a-days  reads; 
the  admired  of  Horace  Walpole;  the  lady  whose  statue 
during  her  life-time,  was  erected  in  the  chancel  of  the 
church  of  St.  Stephen's,  Walbrook.  Graham's  sister 
was  married  to  Dr.  Arnold,  of  Leicester,  the  author 
of  a  valuable  book  on  Insanity. 

With  a  little  intellect  and  more  knavery.  Dr. 
Graham  ran  a  course  very  similar  to  Mesmer.  Emerg- 
ing from  obscurity  in  or  about  the  year  1780,  he 
established  himself  in  a  spacious  mansion  in  the 
Royal  Terrace,  Adelphi,  overlooking  the  Thames,  and 
midway  between   the   Blackfriars  and    Westminster 


346  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

Bridges.  The  river  front  of  the  house  was  orna- 
mented with  classic  pillars;  and  inscribed  over  the 
principal  entrance,  in  gilt  letters  on  a  white  com- 
partment, was  "Templum  .(Esculapio  Sacrum."  The 
"Temple  of  Health,"  as  it  was  usually  spoken  of  in 
London,  quickly  became  a  place  of  fashionable  resort. 
Its  spacious  rooms  were  supplied  with  furniture  made 
to  be  stared  at— sphjmxes,  dragons  breathing  flame, 
marble  statues,  paintings,  medico-electric  apparatus, 
rich  curtains  and  draperies,  stained  glass  windows, 
stands  of  armour,  immense  pillars  and  globes  of  glass, 
and  remarkably  arranged  plates  of  burnished  steel. 
Luxurious  couches  were  arranged  in  the  recesses  of 
the  apartments,  whereon  languid  visitors  were  invited 
to  rest;  whilst  the  senses  were  fascinated  with  strains 
of  gentle  music,  and  the  perfumes  of  spices  burnt  in 
swinging  censers.  The  most  sacred  shrine  of  the 
edifice  stood  in  the  centre  of  "The  Great  Apollo 
Apartment,"  described  by  the  magician  in  the  fol- 
lowing terms:— "This  room  is  upwards  of  thirty  feet 
long,  by  twenty  wide,  and  full  fifteen  feet  high  in 
the  ceiling;  on  entering  which,  words  can  convey  no 
adequate  idea  of  the  astonisdiment  and  awful 
sublimity  which  seizes  the  mind  of  every  spectator. 
The  first  object  which  strikes  the  eye,  astonishes,  ex- 
pands, and  ennobles  the  soul  of  the  beholder,  is  a 
magnificent  temple,  sacred  to  health,  and  dedicated 
to  Apollo.  In  this  tremendous  edifice  are  combined 
or  singly  dispensed  the  irresistible  and  salubrious  in- 
fluences of  electricity,  or  the  elementary  fire,  air,  and 
magnetism;  three  of  the  greatest  of  those  agents  of 
universal  principles,  which,  pervading  all  created  be- 
ing and  substances  that  we  are  acquainted  with,  con- 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  347 

nect,  animate,  and  keep  together  all  nature;— or,  in 
other  words,  principles  which  constitute,  as  it  were,  the 
various  faculties  of  the  material  soul  of  the  universe : 
the  Eternally  Supreme  Jehovah  Himself  being  the 
essential  source— the  Life  of  that  Life— the  Agent  of 
those  Agents— the  Soul  of  that  Soul— the  All-creat- 
ing, all-sustaining,  all-blessing  God!— not  of  this 
world  alone— not  of  the  other  still  greater  worlds 
which  we  know  compose  our  solar  system!  Not  the 
creator,  the  soul,  the  preserver  of  this  world  alone— 
or  of  any  of  those  which  we  have  seen  roll  with  unin- 
terrupted harmony  for  so  many  thousands  of  years ! 
—not  the  God  of  the  millions  of  myriads  of  worlds, 
of  systems,  and  of  various  ranks  and  orders  of  beings 
and  intelligences  which  probably  compose  the  aggre- 
gate of  the  grand,  the  vast,  the  incomprehensible  sys- 
tem of  the  universe!— but  the  eternal,  infinitely  wise, 
and  infinitely  powerful,  infinitely  good  God  of  the 
whole— the  Great  Sun  of  the  Universe!" 

This  blasphemy  was  regarded  in  Bond  Street  and 
Mayfair  as  inspired  wisdom.  It  was  held  to  be  wicked 
not  to  believe  in  Dr.  Graham.  The  "Temple"  was 
crowded  with  the  noble  and  wealthy;  and  Graham, 
mingling  the  madness  of  a  religious  enthusiast  with 
the  craft  of  a  charlatan,  preached  to  his  visitors  and 
prayed  over  them  with  the  zeal  of  Joanna  Southcote. 
He  composed  a  form  of  prayer  to  be  used  in  the  Tem- 
ple, called  "the  Christian's  Universal  Prayer,"  a 
long  rigmarole  of  spasmodic  nonsense,  to  the  printed 
edition  of  which  the  author  afSxed  the  following  note : 
"The  first  idea  of  writing  this  prayer  was  suggested 
by  hearing,  one  evening,  the  celebrated  Mr  Fischer 
play  on  the  hautboy,  with  inimitable  sweetness,  his 


348  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

long-winded  variations  on  some  old  tunes.  I  was  de- 
sirous to  know  what  effect  that  would  have  when  ex- 
tended to  literary  composition.  I  made  the  experi- 
ment as  soon  as  I  got  home,  on  the  Lord 's  Prayer,  and 
wrote  the  following  in  bed,  before  morning:" 

About  the  "Temple  of  Health"  there  are  a  few 
other  interesting  particulars  extant.  The  woman 
who  ofiSciated  in  the  "Sanctum  Sanctorum"  was  the 
fair  and  frail  Emma— in  due  course  to  be  the  wife  of 
Sir  "William  Hamilton,  and  the  goddess  of  Nelson. 
The  charges  for  consulting  the  oracle,  or  a  mere  ad- 
mission in  the  Temple,  were  thus  arranged .  ' '  The 
nobility,  gentrj-,  and  others,  who  apply  through  the 
day,  viz.,  from  ten  to  six,  must  pay  a  guinea  the  first 
consultation,  and  half  a  guinea  every  time  after.  No 
person  whomsoever,  even  personages  of  the  first  rank, 
need  expect  to  be  attended  at  their  own  houses,  unless 
confined  to  bed  by  sickness,  or  to  their  room  through 
extreme  weakness;  and  from  those  whom  he  attends 
at  their  houses  two  guineas  each  visit  is  expected. 
Dr  Graham,  for  reasons  of  the  highest  importance 
to  the  public  as  well  as  to  himself,  has  a  chymical 
laboratory  and  a  great  medicinal  cabinet  in  his  own 
house;  and  in  the  above  fixed  fees  either  at  home  or 
abroad,  every  expense  attending  his  advice,  medi- 
cines, applications,  and  operations,  and  influences, 
are  included — a  few  tedious,  complex,  and  expensive 
operations  in  the  Great  Apollo  apartment  only  ex- 
cepted." 

But  the  humour  of  the  man  culminated  when  he 
bethought  himself  of  displajdng  the  crutches  and 
spectacles  of  restored  patients,  as  trophies  of  his  vic- 
tories over  disease.     "Over  the  doors  of  the  prin- 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DUGTORS.  349 

cipal  rooms,  under  the  vaulted  compartments  of  the 
ceiling,  and  in  each  side  of  the  centre  arches  of  the 
hall,  are  placed  walking-sticks,  ear-trumpets,  visual 
glasses,  crutches,  &c.,  left,  and  here  placed  as  most 
honourable  trophies,  by  deaf,  weak,  paralytic,  and 
emaciated  persons,  cripples,  &c.,  who,  being  cured, 
have  happily  no  longer  need  of  such  assistances." 

Amongst  the  furniture  of  the  "Temple  of  Health" 
was  a  celestial  bed,  provided  with  costly  draperies, 
and  standing  on  glass  legs.  Married  couples,  who 
slept  on  this  couch,  were  sure  of  being  blessed  with  a 
beautiful  progeny.  For  its  use  £100  per  night  was 
demanded,  and  numerous  persons  of  rank  were  fool- 
ish enough  to  comply  with  the  terms.  Besides  his 
celestial  bed  and  magnetic  tomfooleries,  Graham 
vended  an  ' '  Elixir  of  Life, ' '  and  subsequently  recom- 
mended and  superintended  earth-bathing.  Any  one 
who  took  the  elixir  might  live  as  long  as  he  wished. 
For  a  constant  supply  of  so  valuable  a  medicine, 
£1000,  paid  in  advance,  was  the  demand.  More  than 
one  nobleman  paid  that  sum.  The  Duchess  of  Devon- 
shire patronized  Graham,  as  she  did  every  other 
quack  who  came  in  her  way;  and  her  folly  was  coun- 
tenanced by  Lady  Spencer,  Lady  Clermont,  the 
Comtesse  de  Polignac,  and  the  Comtesse  de  Chalon. 

Of  all  Dr.  Graham's  numerous  writings  one  of  the 
most  ridiculous  is  "A  clear,  full,  and  faithful  Por- 
traiture, or  Description,  and  ardent  Recommendation 
of  a  certain  most  beautiful  and  spotless  Virgin  Prin- 
cess, of  Imperial  descent!  To  a  certain  youthful 
Heir- Apparent,  in  the  possession  of  whom  alone  his 
Royal  Highness  can  be  truly,  permanently,  and  su- 
premely happy.    Most  humbly  dedicated  to  his  Royal 


350  A    BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

Highness,  George,  Prince  of  Wales,  and  earnestly 
recommended  to  the  attention  of  the  Members  of  both 
Houses  of  Parliament."  "When  George  the  Third  was 
attacked  for  the  first  time  with  mental  aberration, 
Graham  hastened  down  to  Windsor,  and  obtaining 
an  interview  there  witli  the  Prince  Regent,  with 
thrilling  earnestness  of  manner  assured  his  Royal 
Iliglmess  that  he  would  suffer  in  the  same  way  as  his 
father  xinless  he  married  a  particular  princess  that  he 
(Dr.  Graham)  was  ready  to  introduce  to  him.  On 
the  Prince  inquiring  the  name  of  the  lady,  Graham 
answered,  "Evangelical  Wisdom."  Possibly  the 
royal  patient  would  have  profited,  had  he  obeyed  the 
zealot's  exhortation.  The  work,  of  which  we  have 
just  given  the  title,  is  a  frantic  rhapsody  on  the  beau- 
ties and  excellence  of  the  Virgin  Pi'incess  Wisdom, 
arranged  in  chapters  and  verses,  and  begins  thus:  — 
"chap.  I. 

"Hear!  all  ye  people  of  the  earth,  and  understand; 
give  ear  attentively,  0  ye  kings  and  princes,  and  be 
admonished;  yea,  learn  attentively,  ye  who  are  the 
rulers  and  the  judges  of  the  people. 

"2.  Let  the  inhabitants  of  the  earth  come  before 
me  with  all  the  innocency  and  docility  of  little  chil- 
dren; and  the  kings  and  governors,  with  all  purity 
and  simplicity  of  heart. 

"3.  For  the  Holy  Spirit  of  Wisdom!  or  celestial 
discipline!  flees  from  duplicity  and  deceit,  and  from 
haughtiness  and  hardness  of  heart;  it  removes  far 
from  the  thoughts  that  are  without  understanding; 
and  will  not  abide  when  unrighteousness  cometh  in." 

The  man  who  was  fool  enough  to  write  such  stuff 
as  this  had,  however,  some  common  sense.     He  de- 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  351 

tected  the  real  cause  of  the  maladies  of  half  those 
who  consulted  him,  and  he  did  his  utmost  to  remove 
it  Like  the  French  quack  Villars,  he  preached  up 
"abstinence"  and  "cleanliness."  Of  the  printed 
"general  instructions"  to  his  patients.  No.  2  runs 
thus:— "It  wnll  be  unreasonable  for  Dr  Graham's 
patients  to  expect  a  complete  and  lasting  cure,  or 
even  great  alleviation  of  their  peculiar  maladies,  un- 
less they  keep  their  body  and  limbs  most  perfectly 
clean  with  frequent  washings,  breathe  fresh  open  air 
day  and  night,  be  simple  in  the  quality  and  moderate 
in  the  quantity  of  their  food  and  drink,  and  totally 
give  up  using  deadly  poisons  and  weakeners  of  both 
body  and  soul,  and  the  canker-worms  of  estates, 
called  foreign  tea  and  coffee,  red  port  wine,  spirit- 
uous liquors,  tobacco  and  snuff,  gaming  and  late 
hours,  and  all  sinful  and  unnatural  and  excessive 
indulgence  of  the  animal  appetites,  and  of  the  dia- 
bolical and  degrading  mental  passions.  On  practis- 
ing the  above  rules,  and  a  widely-open  window  day 
and  night,  and  on  washing  with  cold  water,  and  going 
to  bed  every  night  by  eight  or  nine,  and  rising  by 
four  or  five,  depends  the  very  perfection  of  bodily 
and  mental  health,  strength,  and  happiness." 

Many  to  whom  this  advice  was  given  thought  that 
ill-health,  which  made  them  unable  to  enjoy  any- 
thing was  no  worse  an  evil  than  health  brought  on 
terms  that  left  them  nothing  to  enjoy.  During  his 
career  Graham  moved  his  "Temple  of  Health"  from 
the  Adelphi  to  Pali-Mall.  But  he  did  not  prosper  in 
the  long-run.  His  religious  extravagances  for  a  while 
brought  him  adherents,  but  when  they  took  the  form 
of  attacking  the  Established  Church,  they  brought  on 


352  A    BOOK   -VBOUT   DOCTORS. 

him  an  army  of  adversaries.    He  came  also  into  ku- 
miliating  collision  with  the  Edinburgh  authorities. 

Perhaps  the  curative  means  employed  by  Graham 
were  as  justifiable  and  beneficial  as  the  remedies  of 
the  celebrated  doctors  of  ^Miitworth  in  Yorkshire, 
the  brothers  Taylor.  These  gentlemen  were  farriers, 
by  profession,  but  condescended  to  prescribe  for  their 
own  race  as  well,  always,  however,  regarding  the 
vocation  of  brute-doctor  as  superior  in  dignity  to 
that  of  a  physician.  Their  system  of  practice  was  a 
vigorous  one.  They  made  no  gradual  and  insidious 
advances  on  disease,  but  opened  against  it  a  bom- 
bardment of  shot  and  shell  from  all  directions.  They 
bled  their  patients  by  the  gallon,  and  drugged  them 
by  the  stone.  Their  druggists,  Ewbank  and  Wallia 
of  York,  used  to  supply  them  with  a  ton  of  Glauber's 
salts  at  a  time.  In  their  dispensary  scales  and 
weights  were  regarded  as  the  bugbears  of  ignoble 
minds.  Every  Sunday  morning  they  bled  gratis  any 
one  who  liked  to  demand  a  prick  from  their  lancets. 
Often  a  hundred  poor  people  were  seated  on  the  sur- 
gery benches  at  the  same  time,  waiting  for  venesec- 
tion. When  each  of  the  party  had  found  a  seat  the 
two  brothers  passed  rapidly  along  the  lines  of  bared 
arms,  the  one  doctor  deftly  applying  the  ligature 
above  the  elbow,  and  the  other  immediately  opening 
the  vein,  the  crimson  stream  from  which  was  directed 
to  a  wooden  trough  that  ran  round  the  apartment 
in  wliich  the  operations  were  performed.  The  same 
magnificence  of  proportion  characterized  their  ad- 
ministration of  kitchen  physic.  If  they  ordered  a 
patient  broth,  they  directed  his  nurse  to  buy  a  large 
leg  of  mutton,  and  boil  it  in  a  copper  of  water  down 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  353 

to  a  strong  decoction,  of  wliicli  a  quart  should  be 
administered  at  stated  intervals. 

"Wlien  the  little  Abbe  de  Voisenon  was  ordered  by 
his  physician  to  drink  a  quart  of  ptisan  per  hour  he 
was  horrified.    On  his  next  visit  tHie  doctor  asked, 

"■^Tiat  effect  has  the  ptisan  produced?" 

"Not  any,"  answered  the  little  Abbe. 

"Have  you  taken  it  all?" 

"I  could  not  take  more  than  half  of  it." 

The  physician  was  annoyed,  even  angry  that  his 
directions  had  not  been  carried  out,  and  frankly  said 

BO. 

"Ah,  my  friend,"  pleaded  the  Abbe,  "how  could 
you  desire  me  to  swallow  a  quart  an  hour?— I  hold 
hut  a  pint!" 

This  reminds  us  of  a  story  we  have  heard  lold  of  an 
irascible  physician  who  died,  after  attaining  a  vener- 
able age,  at  the  close  of  the  last  century.  The  story 
is  one  of  those  which,  told  once,  are  told  many  times, 
and  affixed  to  new  personages,  according  to  the 
whim  or  ignorance  of  the  narrator. 

"Your  husband  is  very  ill— very  ill— liigh  fever," 
observed  the  Doctor  to  the  poor  labourer's  wife; 
"and  he's  old,  worn,  emaciated :  his  hand  is  as  dry  as 
a  Suffolk  cheese.  You  ulust  keep  giving  him  water 
—as  much  as  he'll  drink;  and,  as  I  am  coming  back 
to-night  from  Woodb ridge,  I'll  see  him  again.  There 
—don't  come  snivelling  about  me!— my  heart  is  a 
deuced  deal  too  hard  to  stand  that  sort  of  thing. 
But,  since  you  want  something  to  cry  about,  just  lis- 
ten—your husband  isn't  going  to  die  yetl  There, 
now  you're  disappointed.     Well,  you  brought  it  on 


354  A    BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

yourself.  Mind  lots  of  water— as  muck  as  he'll 
drink." 

The  doetor  was  ashamed  of  the  feminine  tender- 
ness of  his  heart,  and  tried  to  hide  it  under  an  affec- 
tation of  cynicism,  and  a  manner  at  times  verging  on 
brutality.  Heaven  bless  all  his  descendants,  scat- 
tered over  the  whole  world,  but  all  of  them  brave 
and  virtuous!  A  volume  might  be  written  on  his 
good  qualities;  liis  only  bad  one  being  extreme  iras- 
cibility. His  furies  were  many,  and  sprung  from 
divers  visitations;  but  nothing  was  so  sure  to  lash 
him  into  a  tempest  as  to  be  pestered  with  idle  ques- 
tions. 

"Water,  sir?"  whined  Molly  Meagrim.  "To  be 
sure,  your  honour— water  he  shall  have,  poor  dear 
soul !  But,  your  honour,  how  much  water  ought  I 
to  give  him  ? ' ' 

"Zounds,  woman!  haven't  I  told  you  to  give  him 
as  much  as  he'll  take?— and  you  a.sk  me  how  much! 
How  much? — give  him  a  couple  of  pails  of  water,  if 
he'll  take  'em.  Xow,  do  you  hear  me,  you  old  fool? 
Give  him  a  couple  of  pails." 

"The  Lord  bless  your  honour— yes,"  whined 
Molly. 

To  get  beyond  the  reach  of  her  miserable  voice  the 
Doctor  ran  to  his  horse,  and  rode  off  to  Woodbridge. 
At  night  as  he  returned,  he  stopped  at  the  cottage 
to  inquire  after  the  sick  man. 

"He's  bin  took  away,  yer  honour,"  said  the  wo- 
man, as  the  physician  entered.  "The  water  didn't 
fare  to  do  him  noan  good — noan  in  the  lessest,  sir. 
Only  then  we  couldn't  get  down  the  right  quantity, 
though  we  did  our  best.    "We  got  down  better  nor  a 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTOKS.  355 

pail  and  a  half,  when  he  slipped  out  o'  our  hands. 
Ah,  yer  honour !  if  we  could  but  ha '  got  him  to  swal- 
ler  the  rest,  he  might  still  be  alive !  But  we  did  our 
best,  Doctor!" 

Clumsy  empirics,  however,  as  the  Taylors  were, 
they  attended  people  of  the  first  importance.  The 
elder  Taylor  was  called  to  London  to  attend  Thur- 
low,  Bishop  of  Durham,  the  brother  of  Lord  Chan- 
cellor Thurlow.  The  representative  men  of  the  Fac- 
ulty received  him  at  the  bishop's  residence,  but  he 
would  not  commence  the  consultation  till  the  arrival 
of  John  Hunter.  "I  won't  say  a  word  till  Jack  Hun- 
ter comes,"  roared  the  "\\Tiitworth  doctor;  "he's  the 
only  man  of  you  who  knows  anj'thing. ' '  When  Hun- 
ter arrived,  Taylor  proceeded  to  his  examination  of 
the  bishop's  state,  and,  in  the  course  of  it,  used  some 
ointment  which  he  took  from  a  box. 

"What's  it  made  of?"  Hunter  asked. 

"That's  not  a  fair  question,"  said  Taylor,  turning 
to  the  Lord  Chancellor,  who  happened  to  be  present. 
"No,  no,  Jack.  I'll  send  you  as  much  as  you  please, 
but  I  won't  tell  you  what  it's  made  of." 


CHAPTER  XXI. 


ST.    JOHN    LONG. 


In  the  entire  history  of  charlatanism,  however,  it 
would  be  difScult  to  point  to  a  career  more  extraor- 
dinary than  the  brilliant  though  brief  one  of  St.  John 
Long,  in  our  own  cultivated  London,  at  a  time  scarce- 
ly more  than  a  generation  distant  from  the  present. 
Though  a  pretender,  and  consummate  quack,  he  was 
distinguished  from  the  vulgar  herd  of  cheats  by  the 
possession  of  enviable  personal  endowments,  a  good 
address,  and  a  considerable  quantity  of  intellect. 
The  son  of  an  Irish  basket-maker,  he  was  born  in  or 
near  Doneraile,  and  in  his  boyhood  assisted  in  his 
father's  humble  business.  His  artistic  talents,  which 
he  cultivated  for  some  time  without  the  aid  of  a 
drawing-master,  enabled  him,  while  still  quite  a  lad, 
to  discontinue  working  as  a  rush-weaver.  For  a  lit- 
tle while  he  stayed  at  Dublin,  and  had  some  inter- 
course with  Daniel  Richardson  the  painter;  after 
which  he  moved  to  Limerick  county,  and  started  on 
his  o^vn  account  as  a  portrait-painter,  and  an  in- 
structor in  the  use  of  the  brush.  That  his  education 
was  not  superior  to  what  might  be  expected  in  & 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  357 

clever  youth  of  such  lowly  extraction,  the  following 
advertisement,  copied  from  a  Limerick  paper  of  Feb- 
ruary 10,  1821,  attests:— 

"Mr  John  Saint  John  Long,  Historical  and  Por- 
trait Painter,  the  only  pupil  of  Daniel  Richardson, 
Esq.,  late  of  Dublin,  proposes,  during  his  stay  in 
Limerick,  to  take  portraits  from  litalian  Head  to 
whole  length;  and  parson  desirous  of  getting  theirs 
done,  in  liistorical,  hunting,  shooting,  fishing,  or  any 
other  character;  or  their  family,  grouped  in  one  or 
two  paintings  from  life-size  to  miniature,  so  as  to 
make  an  historical  subject,  choseing  one  from  his- 
tory. 

"The  costume  of  the  period  from  whence  it  would 
be  taken  will  be  particularly  attended  to,  and  the 
character  of  each  proserved. 

"He  would  take  views  in  the  country,  terms  per 
agreement.  Specimens  to  be  seen  at  his  Residence, 
No.  116,  Georges  Street,  opposite  the  Club-house,  and 
at  Mr  James  Dodds,  Paper-staining  Warehouse, 
Georges  Street. 

"Mr  Long  is  advised  by  his  several  friends  to  give 
instructions  in  the  Art  of  Painting  in  Oils,  Opeak, 
Chalk,  and  Water-colours,  &c.,  to  a  limited  number 
of  Pupils  of  Respectability  two  days  in  each  week 
at  stated  hours. 

"Gentlemen  are  not  to  attend  at  the  same  hour 
the  Ladies  attend  at.  He  will  supply  them  in  water- 
colours,  &c." 

How  the  young  artist  acquired  the  name  of  St. 
John  is  a  mystery.  When  he  blazed  into  notoriety, 
his  admirers  asserted  that  it  came  to  him  in  company 
with  noble  blood  that  ran  in  his  veins;  but  more  un- 


358  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

kind  observers  declared  that  it  was  assumed,  as  being 
likely  to  tickle  the  ears  of  his  credulous  adherents. 
Ilis  success  as  a  provincial  art-professor  was  consid- 
erable. The  gentry  of  Limerick  liked  his  manly  bear- 
ing and  livelj'  conversation,  and  in'sated  him  to  their 
houses  to  take  likenesses  of  their  wives,  flirt  with 
their  daughtei-s,  and  accompany  their  sons  on  hunt- 
ing and  shooting  excursions.  Emboldened  by  good 
luck  in  his  own  country,  and  possibly  finding  the 
patronage  of  the  impoverished  aristocracy  of  an  Irish 
pro\'ince  did  not  yield  him  a  sufficient  income,  he 
detennined  to  try  his  fortune  in  England.  Acting 
on  this  resolve,  he  hastened  to  London,  and  with  in- 
gratiating raannei-s  and  that  persuasive  tongue  which 
nine  Irishmen  out  of  ten  possess,  he  managed  to  get 
introductions  to  a  few  respectable  drawing-rooms. 
He  even  obtained  some  employment  from  Sir  Thomas 
Lawrence,  as  colour-grinder  and  useful  assistant  in 
the  studio;  and  was  elected  a  member  of  the  Royal 
Society  of  Literature,  and  also  of  the  Royal  Asiatic 
Society.  But  like  many  an  Irish  adventurer,  before 
and  after  him,  he  found  it  hard  work  to  live  on  his 
impudence,  pleasant  manners,  and  slender  profes- 
sional acquirements.  He  was  glad  to  colour  anatom- 
ical drawings  for  the  professors  and  pupils  of  one 
of  the  minor  surgical  schools  of  London;  and  in 
doing  so  picked  up  a  few  pounds  and  a  very  slight 
knowledge  of  the  structure  of  the  human  frame. 
The  information  so  obtained  stimulated  him  to  fur- 
ther researches,  and,  ere  a  few  more  months  of  star- 
vation had  passed  over,  he  deemed  himself  qualified 
to  cure  all  the  bodily  ailments  to  which  the  children 
of  Adam  are  subject. 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  359 

He  invented  a  lotion  or  liniment  endowed  with  the 
remarkable  faculty  of  distinguishing  between  sound 
and  unsound  tissues.  To  a  healthy  part  it  was  as 
innocuous  as  water;  but  when  applied  to  a  surface 
under  which  any  seeds  of  disease  were  lurking,  it 
became  a  violent  irritant,  creating  a  sore  over  the 
seat  of  mischief,  and  stimulating  nature  to  throw 
off  the  morbid  virus.  He  also  instructed  his  patients 
to  inhale  the  vapour  which  rose  from  a  certain  mix- 
ture compounded  by  him  in  large  quantities,  and 
placed  in  the  interior  of  a  large  mahogany  case, 
which  very  much  resembled  an  upright  piano.  In 
the  sides  of  this  piece  of  furniture  were  apertures, 
into  which  pipe-stalks  were  screwed  for  the  benefit 
of  afilicted  mortals,  who,  sitting  on  easy  lounges, 
smoked  away  like  a  party  of  Turkish  elders. 

With  these  two  agents  St.  John  Long  engaged  to 
combat  every  form  of  disease— gout,  palsj',  obstruc- 
tions of  the  liver,  cutaneous  affections;  but  the  mal- 
ady which  he  professed  to  have  the  most  complete 
command  over  was  consumption.  His  success  in  sur- 
rounding himself  ^rith  patients  was  equal  to  his  au- 
dacity. He  took  a  large  house  in  Harley  Street,  and 
fitted  it  up  for  the  reception  of  people  anxious  to 
consult  him;  and  for  some  seasons  every  morning 
and  afternoon  (from  8  a.m.  to  4  p.m.)  the  public 
way  was  blocked  up  with  carriages  pressing  to  his 
door.  The  old  and  the  young  alike  flocked  to  him; 
but  nine  of  his  patients  out  of  every  ten  were  ladies. 
For  awhile  the  foolish  of  every  rank  in  London 
seemed  to  have  but  one  form  in  which  to  display 
their  folly.  Needy  matrons  from  obscure  suburban 
villages  came  with  their  guineas  to  consult  the  new 


360  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

oracle;  and  ladies  of  the  liigliest  rank,  fashion,  and 
wealth,  hastened  to  place  themselves  and  their  daugh- 
ters at  the  mercy  of  a  pretender's  ignorance. 

Unparalleled  were  the  scenes  which  the  reception- 
rooms  of  that  notorious  house  in  Ilarley  Street  wit- 
nessed. In  one  room  were  two  enormous  inhalers, 
with  flexible  tubes  running  outwards  in  all  directions, 
and  surrounded  by  dozens  of  excited  women— ladies 
of  advajiced  years,  and  young  girls  giddy  with  the 
excitement  of  their  first  London  season— pufBng 
from  their  lips  the  medicated  vapour,  or  waiting  till 
a  mouth-piece  should  be  at  liberty  for  their  pink 
lips.  In  another  room  the  great  magician  received 
his  patients.  Some  he  ordered  to  persevere  in  inhal- 
ation, others  he  divested  of  their  i-aiment,  and  rubbed, 
his  miraculous  liniment  into  their  backs,  between 
their  shoulders  or  over  their  bosoms.  Strange  to  say, 
these  lavations  and  frictions— which  invariably  took 
place  in  the  presence  of  third  persons,  nurses  or  in- 
valids—had very  different  results.  The  fluid,  which, 
as  far  as  the  eye  could  discern,  was  taken  out  of  the 
same  vessel,  and  was  the  same  for  all,  would  instan- 
taneously produce  on  one  lady  a  burning  excoriation, 
wliich  had  in  due  course  to  be  dressed  with  cabbage- 
leaves  ;  but  on  another  would  be  so  powerless  that  she 
could  wash  in  it,  or  drink  it  copiously,  like  ordinary 
pump- water,  with  impunity.  "Yes,"  said  the  wiz- 
ard, ' '  that  was  his  system,  and  such  were  its  effects. 
If  a  girl  had  tubercles  in  her  lungs,  the  lotion  applied 
to  the  outward  surface  of  her  chest  would  produce 
a  sore,  and  extract  the  virus  from  the  organs  of  res- 
piration. If  a  gentleman  had  a  gouty  foot,  and 
washed  it  in  this  new  water  of  Jordan,  at  the  cost 


A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS.  361 

of  a  little  temporary  irritation  the  vicious  particles 
would  leave  the  affected  part.  But  on  any  sound 
person  who  bathed  in  it  the  fluid  would  have  no 
power  whatever." 

The  news  of  the  wonderful  remedy  flew  to  every 
part  of  the  kingdom ;  and  from  every  quarter  sick 
persons,  wearied  of  a  vain  search  after  an  alleviation 
of  their  sufferings,  flocked  to  London  with  hope  re- 
newed once  more.  St.  John  Long  had  so  many  ap- 
plicants for  attention  that  he  was  literally  unable  to 
give  heed  to  all  of  them;  and  he  availed  himself  of 
this  excess  of  business  to  select  for  treatment  those 
cases  only  where  there  seemed  every  chance  of  a  sat- 
isfactory result.  In  this  he  was  perfectly  candid, 
for  time  after  time  he  declared  that  he  would  take  no 
one  under  his  care  who  seemed  to  have  already  gone 
beyond  hope.  On  one  occasion  he  was  called  into  the 
country  to  see  c^  gentleman  who  was  in  the  last  stage 
of  consumption;  and  after  a  brief  examination  of 
the  poor  fellow's  condition,  he  said  frankly — 

"Sir,  you  are  so  ill  that  I  cannot  take  you  under 
my  charge  at  present.  You  want  stamina.  Take 
hearty  meals  of  beefsteaks  and  strong  beer;  and  if 
you  are  better  in  ten  days,  I'll  do  my  best  for  you 
and  cure  you." 

It  was  a  safe  offer  to  make,  for  the  sick  man  lived 
little  more  than  forty-eight  hours  longer. 

But,  notwithstanding  the  calls  of  his  enormous 
practice,  St.  John  Long  found  time  to  enjoy  himself. 
He  went  a  great  deal  into  fashionable  society,  and 
was  petted  by  the  great  and  high-born,  not  only  be- 
cause 'he  was  a  notoriety,  but  because  of  his  easy 
manners,  imposing  carriage,  musical  though  hesitat- 


362  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

ing  voice,  and  agreeable  disposition.  He  was  tall 
and  slig'lit,  but  strongly  built ;  and  bis  countenance, 
tbin  and  firmly  set,  altboug'b  frank  in  expression, 
caused  beboldei-s  to  tbink  higbly  of  bis  intellectual 
refinement,  as  well  as  of  bis  decision  and  energy. 
Possibly  bis  personal  advantages  bad  no  sligbt  influ- 
ence with  his  feminine  applauders.  But  he  possessed 
other  qualities  yet  more  fitted  to  secure  their  esteem 
—an  Irish  impetuosity  of  temperament  and  a  sin- 
cere sympathy  with  the  unfortunate.  lie  was  an 
excellent  horseman,  hunting  regularly,  and  riding 
superb  borees.  On  one  occasion,  as  he  was  cantering 
round  the  Park,  he  saw  a  man  strike  a  woman,  and 
without  an  instant's  consideration  he  pulled  up, 
leaped  to  the  ground,  seized  the  fellow  bodily,  and 
■with  one  enormous  effort  flung  him  slap  over  the 
Park  rails. 

But  horse-exercise  was  the  only  masculine  pastime 
he  was  very  fond  of.  He  was  very  temperate  in  his 
habits;  and  although  Irish  gentlemen  used  to  get 
tipsy,  he  never  did.  Painting,  music,  and  the  society 
of  a  few  really  superior  women,  were  the  principal 
sources  of  enjojTnent  to  which  this  brilliant  charla- 
tan bad  recourse  in  bis  leisure  hours.  Many  were 
the  ladies  of  rank  and  girls  of  gentle  houses  who 
would  have  gladly  linked  their  fortunes  to  bim  and 
his  ten  thousand  a  j^ar.*    But  though  numerous  mat- 

*  A  writer  in  tlie  Gentleman's  Magasine  for  1843  observes : 
— ''In  England,  after  Sir  Astley,  whose  superiority  of  mind 
or  de.xterity  of  hand  stood  uncontested,  another  practitioner 
in  that  category  of  the  Faculty  of  which  it  has  been  said. 
'Periculis  nostris,  et  experimenta  per  mortes  agunt  medici,' 
the  once  famous  St  John  Long  was,  I  believe,  the  most 
largely  requited.  I  had  some  previous  knowledge  of  him,  and 
in   1830  he  showed  me  his  pass-book  with   his  bankers,   Sir 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  363 

rimonial  overtures  wei-e  made  to  him,  he  persevered 
in  his  bachelor  style  of  life;  and  although  he  was 
received  with  peculiar  intimacy  into  the  privacy  of 
female  society,  scandal  never  even  charged  him  with 
a  want  of  honour  or  delicacy  towards  women,  apart 
from  his  quackery.  Indeed,  he  broke  off  his  profes- 
sional connection  with  one  notorious  lady  of  rank, 
rather  than  gratify  her  eccentric  wish  to  have  her 
likeness  taken  by  him  in  that  remarkable  costume— 
or  no  costume  st  all— in  which  she  was  wont  to  re- 
ceive her  visitors. 

In  the  exercise  of  his  art  he  treated  women  unscru- 
pulously. Amidst  the  crowd  of  ladies  who  thronged 
his  reception-rooms  he  moved,  smiling,  courteous, 
and  watchful,  listening  to  their  mutual  eonlidencea 
about  their  maladies,  the  constitutions  of  their  rela- 
tions, and  their  family  interests.  Every  stray  sen- 
tence the  wily  man  caught  up  and  retained  in  his 
memory,  for  future  use.  To  induce  those  to  become 
his  patients  who  had  nothing  the  matter  with  them, 
and  consequently  would  go  to  swell  the  list  of  his 
successful  cases,  he  used  the  most  atrocious  artifices. 

"Ah,  Lady  Emily,  I  saw  your  dear  sister,"  he 
would  say  to  a  patient,  "yesterday— driving  in  the 
Park— lovely  creature  she  is!    Ah,  poor  thing!" 

Claude  Scott  and  Co.,  displaying  a  series  of  credits  from 
July,  i8jo,  to  July,  1830,  or  a  single  year's  operations,  to  the 
extent  of  £13,400.  But  the  delusion  soon  vanished.  One  act 
of  liberality  on  his  part  at  that  period,  however,  I  think  it 
fair  to  record.  To  a  gentleman  who  had  rendered  him 
some  literary  aid,  which  his  defective  education  made  indis- 
pensable, he  presented  double,  not  only  what  he  was  assured 
would  be  an  ample  remuneration,  but  what  exceeded  fourfold 
the  sum  his  friend  would  have  been  satisfied  with,  or  had 
expficled." 


364  A   BOOK   2VBOUT  DOCTORS. 

"Poor  thing,  Mr.  Long!— why,  Catherine  is  the 
picture  of  health!" 

"Ah,"  the  adroit  fellow  would  answer,  sadly,  "you 
tliink  so— so  does  she— and  so  does  every  one  besides 
myself  who  sees  her;  but— but— unless  prompt  re- 
medial measures  are  taken  that  dear  girl,  ere  two 
short  years  have  flown,  will  be  in  her  grave."  This 
mournful  prophecy  would  be  speedily  conveyed  to 
Catherine's  ears;  and,  under  the  influence  of  that 
nervous  dread  of  death  which  almost  invariably  tor- 
ments the  youthful  and  healthy,  she  would  implore 
the  great  p'hysician  to  save  her  from  her  doom.  It 
was  not  difficult  to  quiet  her  anxious  heart.  Attend- 
ance at  41,  Ilarley  Street,  for  six  weeks,  during 
which  time  a  sore  was  created  on  her  breast  by  the 
corrosive  liniment,  and  cured  by  the  application  of 
cabbage-leaves  and  nature's  kindly  processes,  ena- 
bled her  to  go  out  once  more  into  the  world,  sounding 
her  saviour's  praises,  and  convinced  that  she  might 
all  her  life  long  expose  herself  to  the  most  trying 
changes  of  atmosphere,  without  incurring  any  risk 
of  chest-affection. 

But  Mr.  Long  had  not  calculated  that,  although 
nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  constitutions  out  of 
every  thousand  would  not  be  materially  injured  by 
his  treatment,  he  would  at  rare  intervals  meet  with 
a  patient  of  delicate  organization,  on  whom  the  ap- 
plication of  'his  blistering  fluid  would  be  followed  by 
the  most  serious  consequences.  In  the  summer  of  the 
year  1830,  two  young  ladies,  of  a  good  Irish  family, 
named  Cashin,  came  to  London,  and  were  inveigled 
into  the  wizard's  net.  They  were  sisters;  and  the 
younger  of  them,  being  in  delicate  health,  called  on 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  365 

Mr.  Long,  accompanied  by  her  elder  sister.  The  or- 
dinary course  of  inhalation  and  rubbing  was  pre- 
scribed for  the  invalid;  and  ere  long,  frightened  by 
the  quack's  prediction  that,  unless  she  was  subjected 
to  immediate  treatment,  She  would  fall  into  a  rapid 
consumption,  the  other  young  lady  submitted  to  have 
the  corrosive  lotion  rubbed  over  her  back  and  shoul- 
ders. The  operation  was  performed  on  the  3rd  of  Au- 
gust. Forthwith  a  violent  inflammation  was  estab- 
lished: the  wound,  instead  of  healing,  became  daily 
and  hourly  of  a  darker  and  more  unhealthy  aspect; 
unable  to  bear  the  cabbage-leaves  on  the  raw  and 
suppurating  surface,  the  sufferer  induced  her  nurse 
to  apply  a  comforting  poultice  to  the  part,  but  no 
relief  was  obtained  from  it.  St.  John  Long  was  sent 
for,  and  the  14th  (just  eleven  days  after  the  exhi- 
bition of  the  corrosive  liniment),  he  found  his  victim 
in  a  condition  of  extreme  exhaustion  and  pain,  and 
suffering  from  continued  sickness.  Taking  these 
symptoms  as  a  mere  matter  of  course,  he  ordered  her 
a  tumbler  of  mulled  wine,  and  took  his  departure. 
On  the  following  day  (Sunday,  15th)  he  called  again, 
and  offered  to  dress  the  wound.  But  the  poor  girl, 
suddenly  waking  up  to  the  peril  of  'her  position, 
would  not  permit  him  to  touch  her,  and,  raising  her- 
self with  an  effort  in  her  bed,  exclaimed— 

"Indeed,  Mr.  Long,  you  shall  not  touch  my  back 
again— you  very  well  know  that  when  I  became  your 
patient  I  was  in  perfect  health,  but  now  you  are  kill- 
ing me!"  Without  losing  his  self-command  at  this 
pathetic  appeal,  he  looked  into  her  earnest  eyes,  and 
said,  impressively— 

"Whatever  inconvenience  you  are  now  suffering, 


366  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

it  will  be  of  short  duration,  for  in  two  or  three  days 
you  will  be  in  better  health  than  you  ever  were  in 
your  life." 

But  his  words  did  not  restore  her  confidence.  The 
next  day  (the  16th)  Mr.,  now  Sir  Benjamin,  Brodie 
M'as  sent  for,  and  found  on  the  wretched  girl's  back 
an  inflamed  surface  about  the  size  of  a  plate,  having 
in  the  centre  a  spot  as  large  as  the  palm  of  his  hand, 
which  was  in  a  state  of  mortification.  The  time  for 
rescue  was  past.  Sir  Benjamin  prescribed  a  saline 
draught  to  allay  the  sickness;  and  within  twenty- 
four  houi-s  Catherine  Cashin,  who  a  fortnight  before 
had  been  in  perfect  health  and  high  spirits— an  un- 
usually lovely  girl,  in  her  25th  year— lay  upon  her 
bed  in  the  quiet  of  death. 

An  iiproar  immediately  ensued;  and  there  was  an 
almost  universal  cry  from  the  intelligent  people  of 
the  country,  that  the  empiric  should  be  punished. 
A  coroner's  inquest  was  held;  and,  in  spite  of  the 
efforts  made  by  the  charlatan's  fashionable  adher- 
ents, a  verdict  was  obtained  from  the  jury  of  man- 
slaughter against  St.  John  Long.  Every  attempt 
was  made  by  a  set  of  influential  persons  of  high 
rank  to  prevent  the  law  from  taking  its  ordinaiy 
course.  The  issue  of  tlie  warrant  for  the  apprehen- 
sion of  the  offender  was  most  mystei-iously  and  scan- 
dalously delayed :  and  had  it  not  been  for  the  energj' 
of  Mr.  Wakley,  who,  in  a  long  and  useful  career  of 
public  service,  has  earned  for  himself  much  unde- 
served obloquy,  the  affair  would,  even  after  the  ver- 
dict of  the  coroner's  jury,  have  been  hushed  up. 
Eventually,  however,  on  Saturday,  October  30,  St. 
John  Long  was  placed  in  the  dock    of    old  Bailey, 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  367 

charged  with  the  manslaughter  of  Miss  Cashin.  In- 
stead of  deserting  him  in  his  hour  of  need,  his  ad- 
mirers—male and  female— presented  themselves  at 
the  Central  Criminal  Court,  to  encourage  him  by 
their  sympathy,  and  to  give  evidence  in  his  favour. 
The  carriages  of  distinguished  membei-s  of  the  no- 
bility brought  fair  freights  of  the  first  fashion  of 
May-fair  down  to  the  gloomy  court-house  that  ad- 
joins Newgate;  and  belles  of  the  fii-st  fashion  sat  all 
through  the  day  in  the  stifling  atmosphere  of  a 
crowded  court,  looking  languishingly  at  their  hero 
in  the  dock,  who,  from  behind  his  barrier  of  rue  and 
fennel,  distributed  to  them  smiles  of  grateful  recog- 
nition. The  Judge  (Mr.  Justice  Park)  manifested 
throughout  the  trial  a  strong  partisanship  with  the 
prisoner;  and  the  Marchioness  of  Ormond,  who  was 
accommodated  with  a  seat  on  the  bench  by  his  Lord- 
ship's side,  conversed  with  him  in  whispers  during 
the  proceedings.  The  summing  up  was  strongly  in 
favour  of  the  accused;  but,  in  spite  of  the  partial 
judge,  and  an  array  of  fashionable  witnesses  in  fav- 
our of  the  prisoner,  the  jury  returned  a  verdict  of 
guilty. 

As  it  was  late  on  Saturday  when  the  verdict  was 
given,  the  judge  deferred  passing  sentence  till  the 
following  Monday.  At  the  opening  of  the  court  on 
that  day  a  yet  greater  crush  of  the  heau  monde  was 
present;  and  the  judge,  instead  of  awarding  a  term 
of  imprisonment  to  the  guilty  man,  condemned  him 
merely  to  pay  a  fine  of  £250,  or  to  be  imprisoned  till 
such  fine  was  paid.  Mr.  St.  John  Long  immediately 
took  a  roll  of  notes  from  his  pocket,  paid  the  mulct, 
and  leaving  the  court  with  his  triumphant  friends. 


368  A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

accepted  a  seat  in  Lord  Sligo's  curricle,  and  drove 
to  the  west  end  of  the  town. 

The  scandalous  sentence  was  a  fit  conclusion  to  the 
absurd  scenes  which  took  place  in  the  court  of  the 
Old  Bailey,  and  at  the  coroner's  inquest.  At  one  or 
the  other  of  these  inquiries  the  witnesses  advanced 
thousands  of  outrageous  statements,  of  which  the 
following  may  be  taken  as  a  fair  specimen:— 

One  young  lady  gave  evidence  that  she  had  been 
cured  of  consumption  by  Mr.  Long's  liniment;  she 
knew  she  had  been  so  cured,  because  she  had  a  very 
bad  cough,  and,  after  the  rubbing  in  all  the  ointment, 
the  cough  went  away.  An  old  gentleman  testified 
that  he  had  for  years  suffered  from  attacks  of  the 
gout,  at  intervals  of  from  one  to  three  months;  he 
was  convinced  Mr.  Long  had  cured  him,  because  he 
had  been  free  from  gout  for  five  weeks.  Another 
gentleman  had  been  tortured  with  headache;  Mr. 
Long  applied  his  lotion  to  it— the  humour  which 
caused  his  headache  came  away  in  a  clear  limpid 
discharge.'  A  third  gentleman  affirmed  that  Mr. 
Long's  liniment  had  reduced  a  dislocation  of  his 
child's  hip-joint.  The  Marchioness  of  Ormond,  on 
oath,  stated  that  she  knew  that  Miss  Cashin's  back 
was  rubbed  with  the  same  fluid  as  she  and  her  daugh- 
ters had  used  to  wash  their  hands  with ;  but  she  ad- 
mitted that  she  neither  saw  the  back  rubbed,  nor  saw 
the  fluid  with  which  it  was  rubbed  taken  from  the 
bottle.  Sir  Francis  Burdett  also  bore  testimony  to 
the  harmlessness  of  Mr,  Long's  system  of  practice. 
Mr.  Wakley,  in  the  Lancet,  asserted  that  Sir  Francis 
Burdett  had  called  on  Long  to  ask  him  if  his  liniment 
would  give  the  Marquis    of    Anglesea  a  leg,  in  the 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  369 

place  of  the  one  he  lost  at  Waterloo,  if  it  were  ap- 
plied to  the  stump.  Long  gave  an  encouraging  an- 
swer; and  the  lotion  was  applied,  with  the  result  of 
producing  not  an  entire  foot  and  leg— but  a  gi-eat 
toe! 

Miss  Cashin's  death  was  quickly  followed  by  an- 
other fatal  case.  A  Mrs.  Lloyd  died  from  the  effects 
of  the  corrosive  lotion;  and  again  a  coroner's  jury 
found  St.  John  Long  guilty  of  manslaughter,  and 
again  he  was  tried  at  the  Old  Bailey— but  this  sec- 
ond trial  terminated  in  his  acquital. 

It  seems  scarcely  creditable,  and  yet  it  is  true,  that 
these  exposures  did  not  have  the  effect  of  lessening 
'his  popularity.  The  respectable  organs  of  the  Press 
— the  Times,  the  Chronicle,  the  Herald,  the  John, 
Bull,  the  Lancet,  the  Examiner,  the  Spectator,  the 
Standard,  the  Globe,  Blackwood,  and  Fraser,  com- 
bined in  doing  their  best  to  render  him  contemptible 
in  tlie  eyes  of  his  supporters.  But  all  their  efforts 
were  in  vain.  His  old  dupes  remained  staunch  ad- 
herents to  him,  and  every  day  broug'ht  fresh  converts 
to  their  body.  With  unabashed  front  he  went  every- 
where, proclaiming  himself  a  martyr  in  the  cause  of 
humanity,  and  comparing  his  evil  treatment  to  the 
persecutions  that  Galileo,  Harvey,  Jenner,  and  Hun- 
ter underwent  at  the  hands  of  the  prejudiced  and 
ignorant.  Instead  of  uncomplainingly  taking  the 
lashes  of  satirical  writers,  he  first  endeavored  to  bully 
them  into  silence,  and  swaggering  into  newspaper 
and  magazine  ofSees  asked  astonished  editors  how 
they  dared  to  call  him  a  quack.  Finding,  however, 
that  this  line  of  procedure  would  not  improve  his 
position,  he  wrote  his  defence,  and  published  it  in  an 

4—24 


370  A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

octavo  volume,  together  with  numerous  testimonials 
of  his  worth  from  grateful  patients,  and  also  a  letter 
of  cordial  support  from  Dr.  Ramadge,  M.D.,  Oxon., 
a  fellow  of  the  College  of  Physicians.  In  a  ridicu- 
lous and  ungrammatical  epistle,  defending  this  per- 
nicious quack,  who  had  been  convicted  of  manslaugh- 
ter, Dr.  Ramadge  displayed  not  less  anxiety  to 
blacken  the  reputation  of  his  own  profession,  than 
he  did  to  clear  the  fame  of  the  charlatan  whom  he 
designated  "a  guiltless  and  a  cruelly  persecuted  in- 
dividual!!!" The  book  itself  is  one  of  the  most  in- 
teresting to  be  found  in  quack  literature.  On  the 
title-page  is  a  motto  from  Pope— "No  man  deserves 
a  monument  who  could  not  be  wrapped  in  a  winding- 
sheet  of  papers  written  against  him";  and  amongst 
pages  of  jargon  about  humoral  pathology,  it  contains 
confident  predictions  that  if  his  victims  had  contin- 
ued in  his  system,  they  would  have  lived.  The  author 
accuses  the  most  eminent  surgeons  and  physicians  of 
his  time  of  gross  ignorance,  and  of  having  conspired 
together  to  crush  him,  because  they  were  jealous  of 
his  success  and  envious  of  his  income.  He  even  sug- 
gests that  the  same  saline  draught,  prescribed  by  Sir 
Benjamin  Brodie,  killed  Miss  Cashin.  Amongst, 
those  whose  testimonials  appear  in  the  body  of  the 
work  are  the  then  Lord  Ingestre  (his  enthusiastic 
supporter),  Dr.  Macartney,  the  Machioness  of  Or- 
mond,  Lady  Harriet  Kavanagh,  the  Countess  of 
Buckinghamshire,  and  the  Marquis  of  Sligo.  The 
Marchioness  of  Ormond  testifies  how  Mr.  Long  had 
miraculously  cured  her  and  her  daughter  of  "head- 
aches," and  her  youngest  children  of  "smart  at- 
tacks   of    feverish    colds,    one    with    inflammatory 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  371 

sore  throat,  the  others  with  more  serious  bad  symp- 
toms." The  Countess  of  Buckinghamshire  says  she 
is  cured  of  "headache  and  lassitude";  and  Lord 
Ingestre  avows  his  belief  that  Mr.  Long's  system  is 
"preventive  of  disease,"  because  he  himself  is  much 
less  liable  to  catch  cold  than  he  was  before  trying  it. 

Numerous  pamphlets  also  were  written  in  defence 
of  John  St.  John  Long,  Esq.,  M.R.S.L.,  and  M.R.A.S. 
An  anonymous  author  (calling  himself  a  graduate 
of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  and  Member  of  the 
Middle  Temple),  in  a  tract  dated  1831,  does  not  hes- 
itate to  compare  the  object  of  his  eulogy  with  the 
author  of  Christianity.  "But  who  can  wonder  at 
Mr  Long's  persecutions?  The  brightest  character 
that  ever  stept  was  persecuted,  even  unto  death! 
His  cures  were  all  perverted,  but  they  were  not  the 
less  complete;  they  were  miraculous,  but  they  were 
not  the  less  certain ! ' ' 

To  the  last  St.  John  Long  retained  his  practice ;  but 
deati  removed  him  from  the  scene  of  his  triumphs 
while  he  was  still  a  young  man.  The  very  malady, 
his  control  over  which  he  had  so  loudly  proclaimed, 
brought  his  career— in  which  knavery  or  self-delu- 
sion, doubtless  both,  played  a  part— to  an  end.  He 
died  of  consumption,  at  the  age  of  thirty-seven  years. 
Even  in  the  grave  his  patients  honoured  him,  for 
they  erected  an  elegant  and  costly  monument  to  his 
memory,  and  adorned  it  with  the  following  inscrip- 
tion. 

"It  is  the  fate  of  most  men 

To  have  many  enemies,  and  few  friends. 

This  monumental  pile 

Is  not  intended  to  mark  the  career, 

But  to  shew 

How  much  its  inhabitant  was  'espected 


372  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

By  those  who  knew  his  worth, 

And  the  benefits 

Derived  from  his  remedial  discovery. 

He  is  now  at  rest. 

And   far  beyond  the  praises  or  censures 

Of  this  world. 

Stranger,  as  you  respect  the  receptacle  of  the  dead 

(As  one  of  the  many  who  will  rest  here), 

Read  the  name  of 

John  Saint  John  Long 

without  comment." 

Notwithstanding  the  exquisite  drollery  of  this  in- 
scription, in  speaking  of  a  plebeian  quack-doctor 
(who,  by  the  exercise  of  empiricism,  raised  himself 
to  the  possession  of  £5000  per  annum,  and  the  inti- 
mate friendship  of  numbers  of  the  aristocracy)  as 
the  victim  of  "many  enemies  and  few  friends,"  it 
cannot  be  said  to  be  open  to  much  censure.  Indeed, 
St.  John  Long's  worshippers  were  for  the  most  part 
of  that  social  grade  in  which  bad  taste  is  rare,  though 
weakness  of  understanding  possibly  may  not  be  un- 
common. 

The  sepulchre  itself  is  a  graceful  structure,  and 
occupies  a  prominent  position  in  the  Kensal  Green 
cemetery,  by  the  side  of  the  principal  carriage-way, 
leading  from  the  entrance-gate  to  the  chapel  of  the 
burial-ground.  Immediately  opposite  to  it,  on  the 
other  side  of  the  gravel  drive,  stands,  not  inappro- 
priately, the  flaunting  sepulchre  of  Andrew  Ducrow, 
the  horse-rider,  "whose  death,"  the  inscription  in- 
forms us,  "deprived  the  arts  and  sciences  of  an  emi- 
nent professor  and  liberal  patron."  When  any 
cockney  bard  shall  feel  himself  inspired  to  write  an 
elegy  on  the  west-end  grave-yard,  he  will  not  omit 
to  compare  John  St,  John  Long's  tomb  with  that  of 
"the  liberal  patron  of  the  arts  and  sciences,"  and 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  373 

also  with  the  cumbrous  heap  of  masonry  which  cov- 
ers the  ashes  of  Dr.  ilorrison,  hygeist,  which  learned 
word,  being  inteipreted,  means  "the  inventor  of 
Morrison's  pills." 

To  give  a  finishing  touch  to  the  memoir  of  this 
celebrated  charlatan,  it  may  be  added  that  after  his 
death  his  property  became  the  subject  of  tedious  lit- 
igation; and  amongst  the  claimants  upon  it  was  a 
woman  advanced  in  years,  and  of  an  address  and 
style  that  proved  her  to  belong  to  a  very  humble 
state  of  life.  This  woman  turned  out  to  be  St.  John 
Long's  wife.  He  had  married  her  when  quite  a  lad, 
had  found  it  impossible  to  live  with  her,  and  conse- 
quently had  induced  her  to  consent  to  an  amicable 
separation.  This  discovery  was  a  source  of  great 
surprise,  and  also  of  enlightenment  to  the  numerous 
high-born  and  richly-endowed  ladies  who  had  made 
overtures  of  marriage  to  the  idolized  quack,  and, 
much  to  their  surprise,  had  had  their  advances  adroit- 
ly but  firmly  declined. 

There  are  yet  to  be  found  in  English  society,  ladies 
—not  silly,  frivolous  women,  but  some  of  those  on 
whom  the  world  of  intellect  has  put  the  stamp  of  its 
approval — who  cherish  such  tender  reminiscences  of 
St.  John  Long,  that  they  cannot  mention  his  name 
^rithout  their  eyes  becoming  bright  with  tears.  Of 
course  this  proves  nothing,  save  the  credulity  and 
fond  infatuation  of  the  fair  ones  who  love.  The 
hands  of  women  decked  Nero's  tomb  \vith  flowers. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE  QUARRELS  OP   PHYSICIANS. 

For  many  a  day  authors  have  had  the  reputation 
of  being  more  sensitive  and  quarrelsome  than  any 
other  set  of  men.  Trutli  to  tell,  they  are  not  always 
so  amiable  and  brilliant  as  their  works.  There  is 
in  them  the  national  churlishness  inducing  them  to 
nurse  a  contempt  for  every  one  they  don't  person-  • 
ally  know,  and  a  spirit  of  antagonism  towards  nearly 
every  one  they  do.  But  to  say  this  is  only  to  say  that 
they  are  made  of  British  oak.  Unfortunately,  how- 
ever, they  carry  on  their  contentions  in  a  manner 
that  gives  them  a  wide  publicity  and  a  troublesome 
duration  of  fame.  Soldiers,  when  they  quarrelled 
in  the  last  century,  shot  one  another  like  gentlemen, 
at  two  paces'  distance,  and  with  the  crack  of  their 
pistols  the  whole  noise  of  the  matter  ceased.  Au- 
thors, from  time  immemorial,  have  in  their  angry  mo- 
ments rushed  into  print,  and  lashed  their  adversa- 
ries with  satire,  rendered  permanent  by  aid  of  the 
printer's  devil,— thus  letting  posterity  know  all  the 
secrets  of  their  folly,  whilst  the  merciful  grave  put 
an  end  to  all  memorial  of  the  extravagances  of  their 


'vy.ii  XX u 


For  mar. 
of  beinsr  ' 

other  -  :  7>£  ANAro.Mrsr 

so  am 

in  the 

nurse  a  c 

ally  know, 

every  one 

they  are  made  i 

ev"    '' ' 

tL,  1 

duration  of   fame 

in  the  last  cent---'- 

at  two  paces'  ■ 

pistols  the  whole  n  \  Au- 

th'    ■   '-—   '••      ■- 

IT' 

i  the, 

1  the 

I  put 

11  Tnemo  .f  their 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  375 

friends.  There  was  less  love  between  Radcliffe  and 
Hannes,  Freind  and  Blackmore,  Gibbons  and  Garth, 
than  between  Pope  and  Dennis,  Swift  and  Grub 
Street.  But  we  know  ail  about  the  squabbles  of  the 
writers  from  their  poems;  whereas  only  a  va^e  tra- 
dition, in  the  form  of  questionable  anecdotes,  has 
come  down  to  us  of  the  animosities  of  the  doctors— 
a  tradition  which  would  long  ere  this  have  died  out, 
had  not  Garth — author  as  well  as  physician— written 
the  "Dispensary,"  and  a  host  of  dirty  little  apoth- 
ecaries contracted  a  habit  of  scribbling  lampoons 
about  their  professional  superiors. 

Luckily  for  the  members  of  it,  the  Faculty  of  Med- 
icine is  singularly  barren  of  biographies.  The  career 
of  a  physician  is  so  essentially  one  of  confidence, 
that  even  were  he  to  keep  a  memorial  of  its  interest- 
ing occurrences,  his  son  wouldn't  dare  to  sell  it  to 
a  publisher  as  the  "Revelations  of  a  Departed  Phy- 
sician." Long  ere  it  would  be  decent  or  safe  to  print 
such  a  diary,  the  public  would  have  ceased  to  take 
an  interest  in  the  writer.  Pettigrew  's  ' '  Life  of  Lett- 
som,"  and  Macil wain's  "Memoirs  of  Abernethy," 
are  almost  the  only  two  passable  biographies  of  emi- 
nent medical  practitioners  in  the  English  language; 
and  the  last  of  these  does  not  presume  to  enter  fully 
on  the  social  relations  of  the  great  surgeon.  The 
lives  of  Hunter  and  Jenner  are  meagre  and  un- 
worthily executed,  and  of  Bransby  Cooper's  Life  of 
his  uncle  little  can  be  said  that  is  not  in  the  language 
of  emphatic  condemnation. 

From  this  absence  of  biographical  literature  the 
medical  profession  at  least  derives  this  advantage— 
the  world  at  large  knows  comparatively  little  of  their 


376  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

petty  feuds  and  internal  differences  than  it  would 
otherwise. 

The  few  memorials,  however,  that  we  have  of  the 
quarrels  of  physicians  are  of  a  kind  that  makes  us 
wish  we  had  more.  Of  the  great  battle  of  the  apoth- 
ecaries with  the  physicians  we  have  already  spoken 
in  the  notice  of  Sir  Samiiel  Garth.  To  those  who 
are  ignorant  of  human  nature  it  may  appear  incredi- 
ble that  a  body,  so  lovingly  united  against  common 
foes,  should  have  warred  amongst  them.selves.  Yet 
such  was  the  ease.  A  London  druggist  once  put  up 
at  the  chief  inn  of  a  provincial  capital,  whither  he 
had  come  in  the  course  of  his  annual  summer  ride. 
The  good  man  thought  it  would  hurt  neither  his 
health  nor  his  interests  to  give  "a  little  supper"  to 
the  apothecaries  of  the  town  with  whom  he  was  in  the 
habit  of  doing  business.  Under  the  influence  of  this 
feeling  he  sallied  out  from  "The  White  Horse,"  and 
spent  a  few  hours  in  calling  on  his  friends  — a.sking 
for  orders  and  delivering  invitations.  On  returning 
to  his  inn,  he  ordered  a  supper  for  twelve— as  eleven 
medical  gentlemen  had  engaged  to  sup  with  him. 
When  the  hour  appointed  for  the  repast  was  at  hand, 
a  knock  at  the  door  was  followed  by  the  appearance 
of  guest  A,  with  a  smile  of  intense  benevolence  and 
enjoyment.  Another  rap— and  guest  B  entered.  A 
looked  blank— every  trace  of  happiness  suddenly 
vanishing  from  his  face.     B  stared  at  A,  as  much  as 

to  say,  ' '  You  be ! "     A  shuffled  with  his  feet, 

rose,  made  an  apology  to  his  host  for  leaving  the 
room  to  attend  to  a  little  matter,  and  disappeared. 
Another  rap— and  C  made  his  bow  of  greeting.  "I'll 
try  to  be  back  in  five  minutes,  but  if  I'm  not,  don't 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  377 

wait  for  me,"  cried  B,  hurriedly  seizing  his  hat  and 
rushing  from  the  apartment.  C,  a  cold-blooded, 
phlegmatic  man,  sat  down  unconcernedly,  and  was 
a  picture  of  sleeping  contentment  till  the  entry  of 
D,  when  his  hair  stood  on  end,  and  he  fled  into  the 
inn-yard,  as  if  he  were  pursued  by  a  hyena.  E 
knocked  and  said,  "How  d'  you  do?"  D  sprung 
from  his  chair,  and  shouted,  "Good-bye!"  And  so 
it  went  on  till,  on  guest  No.  11  joining  the  party— 
that  had  received  so  many  new  comers,  and  yet  never 
for  an  instant  numbered  more  than  three— No.  10 
jumped  through  the  window,  and  ran  down  the  street 
to  the  bosom  of  his  family.  The  hospitable  druggist 
and  No.  11  found,  on  a  table  provided  for  twelve, 
quite  as  much  supper  as  they  required. 

Next  morning  the  druggist  called  on  A  for  an  ex- 
planation of  his  conduct.  "Sir,"  was  the  answer, 
"I  could  not  stop  in  the  same  room  with  such  a 
scoundrel  as  B."  So  it  went  straight  down  the  line. 
B  had  vowed  never  to  exchange  words  with  C.  C 
would  be  shot  rather  than  sit  at  the  same  table  with 
such  a  scoundrel  as  D. 

"You  gentlemen,"  observed  the  druggist,  with  a 
smile  to  each,  "seem  to  be  almost  as  well  disposed 
amongst  yourselves  as  your  brethren  in  London; 
only  they,  when  they  meet,  don't  run  from  each 
other,  but  draw  up,  square  their  elbows,  and  fight 
like  men." 

The  duel  between  Mead  and  Woodward,  as  it  is 
more  particularly  mentioned  in  another  part  of  these 
volumes,  we  need  here  only  to  allude  to.  The  con- 
test between  Cheyne  and  Wynter  was  of  a  less  bloody 
character.     ChejTie  was  a  Bath  physician,  of  great 


378  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

practice  and  yet  greater  popularity— dying  in  1743, 
at  the  age  of  seventy-two.  At  one  time  of  his  life 
he  was  so  prodigiously  fat  that  he  weighed  32  stone, 
he  and  a  gentleman  named  Tantley  being  the  two 
stoutest  men  in  Somersetshire.  One  day,  after  din- 
ner, the  former  asked  the  latter  what  he  was  think- 
ing about. 

"I  was  thinking,"  answered  Tantly,  "how  it  will 
be  possible  to  get  either  you  or  me  into  the  grave 
after  we  die." 

Cheyne  was  nettled,  and  retorted,  "Six  or  eight 
stout  fellows  will  do  the  business  for  me,  but  you 
must  be  taken  at  twice." 

ChejTie  was  a  sensible  man,  and  had  more  than  one 
rough  passage  of  arms  with  Beau  Nash,  when  the 
beau  was  dictator  of  the  pump-room.  Nash  called 
the  doctor  in  and  asked  him  to  prescribe  for  him. 
The  next  day,  when  the  phj^ician  called  and  in- 
quired if  his  prescription  had  been  followed,  the 
beau  languidly  replied:— 

"No,  i'  faith,  doctor,  I  haven't  followed  it.  Ton 
honour,  if  I  had  I  should  have  broken  my  neck,  for 
I  threw  it  out  of  my  bed-room  window." 

But  ChejTie  had  wit  enough  to  reward  the  inven- 
tor of  the  white  hat  for  this  piece  of  insolence.  One 
day  he  and  some  of  his  learned  friends  were  enjoying 
themselves  over  the  bottle,  laughing  with  a  heartiness 
unseemly  in  philosophers,  when,  seeing  the  beau 
draw  near,  the  doctor  said:— 

"Hush,  we  must  be  grave  now,  here's  a  fool  com- 
ing our  way. ' ' 

Oheyne  became  ashamed  of  his  obesity,  and  ear- 
nestly set  about  overcoming  it.     He  brought  himself 


A    BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS.  379 

down  by  degrees  tx)  a  moderate  diet,  and  took  daily 
a  large  amount  of  exercise.  The  result  was  that  he 
reduced  himself  to  under  eleven  stone,  and,  instead 
of  injiiring  his  constitution,  found  himself  in  the 
enjoyment  of  better  health.  Impressed  with  the  value 
of  the  discovery  lie  had  made,  he  wrote  a  book  urging 
all  people  afflicted  with  chronic  maladies  to  imitate 
him  and  try  the  effects  of  temperance.  Doctors,  not- 
withstanding their  precepts  m  favour  of  moderation, 
neither  are,  nor  ever  have  been,  averse  to  the  pleas- 
ures of  the  table.  Many  of  them  warmly  resented 
Cheyne's  endeavours  to  bring  good  living  into  dis- 
repute, possibly  deeming  that  their  interests  were 
attacked  not  less  than  their  habits.    Dryden  wrote, 

"The  first  physicians  by  debauch  were  made. 
Excess  began,  and  sloth  sustained  the  trade; 
By  chase  our  long-Iiv'd  fathers  earned  their  food, 
Toil  strung  their  nerves  and  purified  their  blood; 
But  we,  their  sons,  a  pamper'd  race  of  men. 
Are  dwindled  down  to  threescore  years  and  ten. 
Better  to  hunt  in  fields  for  health  unbought, 
Than  fee  the  doctor  for  a  nauseous  draught; 
The  wise  for  cure  on  exercise  depend, 
God  never  made  his  work  for  man  to  mend." 

Dr.  Wynter  arose  to  dispose  of  Cheyne  in  a  sum- 
mary fashion.  Wynter  had  two  good  reasons  for 
hating  Cheyne :  Wynter  was  an  Englishman  and 
loved  wine,  Cheyne  was  a  Scotchman  and  loved 
milk. 

Dr.  Wynter  to  Dr.  Cheyne. 
"Tell  me  from  whom,  fat-headed  Scot, 
Thou  didst  thy  system  learn ; 
From  Hippocrate  thou  hadst  it  not. 
Nor  Celsus,  nor  Pitcairn. 

"Suppose  we  own  that  milk  is  good. 
And  say  the  same  of  grass; 
The  one  for  babes  is  only  food. 
The  other  for  an  ass. 


380  A  BOOK  ABOI'T  DOCTORS. 

"Doctor,  one  new  prescription  try 
(A   friend's  advice   forgive), 
Eat  grass,  reduce  thyself,  and  die, 
Thy  patients  then  may  live." 

Cheyne  responded,  with  more  wit  and  more  good 
manners,  in  the  following  fashion  :— 

"Dr.  Cheyne  to  Dr.  Wynter. 

"My  system,  doctor,  is  my  own. 
No  tutor   I  pretend; 
My  blunders  hurt  myself  alone. 
But  yours  your  dearest  friend. 

"Were  you  to  milk  and  straw  confin'd, 
Thrice   happy  might  you  be; 
Perhaps  you  might  regain  your  mind, 
And  from  your  wit  be  free. 

"I  can't  your  kind  prescription  try. 
But  heartily  forgive; 
'Tis  natural  you  should  wish  me  die, 
That  you  yourself  may  live." 

The  concluding  two  lines  of  Cheyne 's  answer  were 
doubtless  little  to  the  taste  of  his  unsuccessful  op- 
ponent. 

In  their  contentions  physicians  have  not  often  had 
recourse  to  the  duel.  With  tliem  an  appeal  to  arms 
has  rarely  been  resorted  to,  but  when  it  has  been  de- 
liberately made  the  combatants  have  usually  fought 
with  decision.  The  few  duels  fought  between  women 
have  for  the  most  part  been  characterized  by  Ameri- 
can ferocity.  Madame  Dunoyer  mentions  a  case  of 
a  duel  with  swords  between  two  ladies  of  rank,  who 
would  have  killed  each  other  had  they  not  been  sep- 
arated. In  a  feminine  duel  on  the  Boulevard  St.  An- 
toine,  mentioned  by  De  la  Colombeire,  both  the  prin- 
cipals received  several  wounds  on  the  face  and  bos- 
om—a most  important  fact  illustrative  of  the  pride 
the  ^air  sex  take  in  those  parts.*     Sometimes  ladies 

*  Vide  Millingen's  "History  of  Duelling." 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  381 

have  distinguished  themselves  by  fig'hting  duels  with 
men.  Mademoiselle  Dureux  fought  her  lover  Anti- 
notti  in  an  open  street.  The  actress  Maupin  chal- 
lenged Dumeny,  but  he  declined  to  give  her  satisfac- 
tion ;  so  the  lady  stripped  him  of  watch  and  snuff-box, 
and  bore  them  away  as  trophies  of  victory.  The  same 
lady,  on  another  occasion,  having  insulted  in  a  ball- 
room a  distinguished  personage  of  her  own  sex,  was 
requested  by  several  gentlemen  to  quit  the  entertain- 
ment. She  obeyed,  but  forthwith  challenged  and 
fought  each  of  the  meddlesome  cavaliers — and  killed 
them  all!  The  slaughter  accomplished,  she  returned 
to  the  ball-room,  and  danced  in  the  presence  of  her 
rival.  The  Marquise  de  Nesle  and  the  Countess  Po- 
lignac,  under  the  Regency,  fought  with  pistols  for  the 
possession  of  the  Due  de  Richelieu.  In  or  about  the 
year  1827,  a  lady  of  Chateauroux,  whose  husband 
had  received  a  slap  in  the  face,  called  out  the  offend- 
er, and  severely  wounded  him  in  a  duel  fought  with 
swords.  The  most  dramatic  affair  of  honour,  how- 
ever, in  the  annals  of  female  duelling  occurred  in 
the  year  1828,  when  a  young  French  girl  challenged 
a  garde  du  corps  who  had  seduced  her.  At  the  meet-, 
ing  the  seconds  took  the  precaution  of  loading  with- 
out ball,  the  fair  principal  of  course  being  kept 
in  ignorance  of  the  arrangement.  She  fired  first  and 
saw  her  seducer  remain  unhurt.  Without  flinching, 
or  changing  colour,  she  stood  watching  her  adversary, 
whilst  he  took  a  deliberate  aim  (in  order  to  test  her 
courage),  and  then,  after  a  painful  pause,  fired  into 
the  air. 

Physicians    have    been    coupled    with    priests,    as 
beings  holding  a  position  between  the  two  sexes.    In 


382  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

the  Lancashire  factories  they  allow  women  and  cler- 
gymen the  benefit  of  an  entree— because  they  don't 
understand  business.  Doctors  and  ladies  could  hard- 
ly be  coupled  together  by  the  same  consideration; 
but  they  might  be  put  in  one  class  out  of  respect 
to  that  gentleness  of  demeanour  and  suavity  of  voice 
which  distinguish  the  members  of  the  medical  profes- 
sion, in  common  with  well-bred  women. 

Gentle  though  they  be,  physicians  have,  however, 
sometimes  indulged  in  wordy  wrangling,  and  then 
had  recourse  to  more  sanguinary  arguments. 

The  duel  between  Dr.  Williams  and  Dr.  Bennet  was 
one  of  the  bloodiest  in  the  eighteenth  century.  They 
first  battered  each  other  with  pamphlets,  and  then  ex- 
changed blows.  Matters  having  advanced  so  far.  Dr. 
Bennet  proposed  that  the  fig'ht  should  be  continued 
in  a  gentlemanly  style— with  powder  instead  of  fists. 
The  challenge  was  declined;  whereupon  Dr.  Bennet 
called  on  Dr.  Williams,  to  taunt  him  with  a  charge 
of  cowardice.  No  sooner  had  he  rapped  at  the  door, 
than  it  was  opened  by  Williams  himself,  holding  in 
his  hand  a  pistol  loaded  with  swan-^ot,  which  he, 
without  a  moment's  parley,  discharged  into  his  ad- 
versary's breast.  Severely  wounded,  Bennet  retired 
across  the  street  to  a  friend 's  house,  followed  by  Wil- 
liams, who  fired  another  pistol  at  him.  Such  was  the 
demoniacal  fury  of  Williams,  that,  not  contented 
with  this  outrage,  he  drew  his  sword,  and  ran  Bennet 
through  the  body.  But  this  last  blow  was  repaid. 
Bennet  managed  to  draw  his  rapier,  and  give  his  fe- 
rocious adversary  a  home-thrust— his  sword  entering 
the  breast,  coming  out  through  the  shoulder-blade, 
and  snapping  short.     Williams  crawled  back  in  the 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  383 

direction  of  his  house,  but  before  he  could  reach  it 
fell  down  dead.  Bennet  lived  only  four  hours.  A 
pleasant  scene  for  the  virtuous  capital  of  a  civilized 
and  Christian  people! 

The  example  of  Dr.  Bennet  and  Dr.  Williams  was 
not  lost  upon  the  physicians  of  our  American  cousins. 
In  the  August  of  1830,  a  meeting  took  place,  near 
Philadelpnia,  between  Dr.  Smith  and  Dr.  Jeffries. 
They  exchanged  shots  at  eight  paces,  without  inflict- 
ing any  injury,  when  their  friends  interposed,  and 
tried  to  arrange  the  difficulty;  but  Dr.  Jeffries  swore 
that  he  would  not  leave  the  ground  till  some  one  had 
been  killed.  The  pi-incipals  were  therefore  put  up 
again.  At  che  second  exchange  of  shots  Dr.  Smith's 
right  arm  was  broken,  when  he  gallantly  declared 
that,  as  he  was  wounded,  it  would  be  gratifying  to 
his  feelings,  to  be  killed.  Third  exchange  of  shots, 
and  Dr.  Smith,  firing  with  his  left  arm,  hits  his  man 
in  the  thigh,  causing  immense  loss  of  blood.  Five 
minutes  were  occupied  in  bandaging  the  wound; 
when  Dr.  Jeffries,  properly  primed  with  brandy,  re- 
quested that  no  further  obstacles  might  be  raised 
between  him  and  satisfaction.  For  a  fourth  time  the 
mad  men  were  put  up— at  the  distance  of  six  feet. 
The  result  was  fatal  to  both.  Dr.  Smith  dropped  dead 
with  a  baU  in  his  heart.  Dr.  Jeffries  was  shot  through 
the  breast,  and  survived  only  a  few  hours.  The  con- 
duct of  Dr.  Jeffries  during  those  last  few  hours  was 
admirable,  and  most  delightfully  in  keeping  with 
the  rest  of  the  proceeding.  On  seeing  his  antagonist 
prostrate,  the  doctor  asked  if  he  was  dead.  On  being 
assured  that  his  enemy  lived  no  longer,  he  observed, 
"Then  I  die  contented."    He  then  stated  that  he  had 


384  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

been  a  school-mate  with  Dr.  Smith,  and  that,  during 
the  fifteen  years  throughout  which  they  had  been  on 
terms  of  great  intimacy  and  friendship,  he  had  val- 
ued him  highly  as  a  man  of  science  and  a  gentle- 
man. 

One  of  the  latest  duels  in  which  an  English  physi- 
cian was  concerned  as  a  principal  was  that  fought  on 
the  10th  of  May,  183.3,  near  Exeter,  between  Sir  John 
Jeffcott  and  Dr.  Hennis.  Dr.  Ilennis  received  a 
wound,  of  which  he  died.  The  affair  was  brought 
in'to  the  Criminal  Court,  and  was  for  a  short  time 
a  cause  celebre  on  the  "western  circuit;  but  the  mem- 
ory of  it  has  now  almost  entirely  disappeared. 

As  we  have  already  stated,  duels  have  been  rare  in 
the  medical  profession.  Like  the  ladies,  physicians 
have,  in  their  periods  of  anger,  been  content  with 
speaking  ill  of  each  other.  That  they  have  not  lost 
their  power  of  courteous  criticism  and  judicious 
abuse,  any  one  may  learn,  who,  for  a  few  hours, 
breathes  the  atmosphere  of  their  cliques.  It  is  good 
to  hear  an  allopathic  physician  perform  his  duty  to 
society  by  frankly  stating  his  opinion  of  the  character 
and  conduct  of  an  eminent  homceopathic  practitioner. 
Perhaps  it  is  better  still  to  listen  to  an  apostle  of 
homoeopathy,  when  he  takes  up  his  parable  and  curses 
the  hosts  of  allopathy.  "Sir,  I  tell  you  in  confi- 
dence," observed  a  distinguished  man  of  science,  tap- 
ping his  auditor  on  the  shoulder,  and  mysteriously 
wihispering  in  his  ear,  "I  know  things  about  that  man 
that  would  make  him  end  his  days  in  penal  servi- 
tude." The  nest  day  the  auditor  was  closeted  in  the 
considting-room  of  that  man,  when  that  man  said— 
quite  in  confiden'Ce,  pointing  as  he  spoke  to  a  strong 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  385 

box,  and  jingling  a  buncli  of  keys  in  liis  pocket— "I 
have  papers  in  that  box,  whie'h,  properly  used,  would 
tie  a  certain  friend  of  ours  up  by  the  neck." 

Lettsom,  loose-living  man  though  he  was  for  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Society  of  Friends,  had  enough  of  the 
Quaker  element  in  him  to  be  very  fond  of  contro- 
versy. He  dearly  loved  to  expose  quackery,  and  in 
some  eases  did  good  service  in  that  way.  In  the 
Medical  Journal  he  attacked,  a.  d.  1806,  no  less  a  man 
than  Brodum,  the  proprietor  of  the  Nervous  Cordial, 
avowing  that  that  precious  compound  had  killed  thou- 
sands; and  also  stating  that  Brodum  had  added  to 
the  crime  of  wholesale  murder  the  atrocities  of  hav- 
ing been  bom  a  Jew,  of  having  been  a  shoe-black  in 
Copenhagen,  and  of  having  at  some  period  of  his 
chequered  career  carried  on  an  ignoble  trade  in  or- 
anges. Of  course  Brodum  saw  his  advantage.  He 
immediately  brought  an  action  against  Phillips,  the 
proprietor  of  the  Medical  Journal,  laying  his  dam- 
ages at  £5000.  The  lawyers  anticipated  a  harvest 
from  the  case,  and  were  proceeding  not  only  against 
Phillips,  but  various  newsvendors  also,  when  a  news- 
paper editor  stept  in  between  Phillips  and  Brodum, 
and  contrived  to  settle  the  dispute.  Brodum 's  terms 
were  not  modest  ones.  He  consented  to  withdraw  his 
actions,  if  the  name  of  the  author  was  given  up,  and 
if  the  author  would  whitewash  him  in  the  next  num- 
ber of  the  Journal,  under  the  same  signature.  Lett- 
som consented,  paid  the  two  attorneys'  bills,  amount- 
ing to  £390,  and  wrote  the  required  puff  of  Brodum 
and  his  Nervous  Cordial. 

One  of  the  singular  characters  of  Dublin,  a  genera- 
tion ago,  was  John  Brenan,  M.D.,  a  physician  who 

4—25 


386  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

edited  the  Milesian  Magazine,  a  scurrilous  publica- 
tion of  the  satirist  class,  that  flung  dirt  on  every  one 
dignified  enough  for  the  mob  to  take  pleasure  in  see- 
ing him  bespattered  with  filth.  The  man  certainly 
was  a  great  blackguard,  but  was  not  destitute  of 
wit.  How  he  carried  on  the  war  with  the  members 
of  his  own  profession  the  following  song  will  show: — 

"THE  DUBLIN  DOCTORS. 

"My  gentle  muse,  do  not  refuse 
To  sing  the  Dublin  Doctors,  O ; 
For  they're  the  boys 
Who  make  the  joys 
Of  grave-diggers  and  proctors,  O. 

We'll  take  'em  in  procession,  O, 
We'll  take  'em  in  succession,  O; 

But  how  shall  we 

Say  who  is  he 
Shall  lead  the  grand  procession,  O? 

Least  wit  and  greatest  malice,  O, 
Least  wit  and  greatest  malice,  O, 

Shall  mark  the  man 

Who  leads  the  van, 
As  they  march  to  the  gallows,  O. 

First  come  then,  Doctor  Big  Paw,  O, 
Come  first  then,  Doctor  Big  Paw,  O; 

Mrs  Kilfoyle 

Says  you  would  spoil 
Its  shape,  did  you  her  wig  paw,  O. 

Come  next,  dull  Dr  Labat,  O, 
Come  next,  dull  Dr  Labat,  O ; 

Why  is  it  so, 

You  kill  the  doe. 
Whene'er  you  catch  the  rabbit,  O? 

Come,  Harvey,  drunken  dandy,  O, 
Come,  Harvey,  drunken  dandy,  O ; 

Thee  I  could  paint 

A  walking  saint, 
If  you  lov'd  God  like  brandy,  O. 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  387 


Come  next,  Doctor  Drumsnuffle,  O, 
Come  next,  Doctor  Drumsnuffle,  O; 

Well  stuffed  with  lead. 

Your  leather  head 
Is  thick  as  hide  of  Buffaloe. 

Come  next,  Colossus  Jackson,  O, 
Come  next.  Colossus  Jackson,  O ; 

As  jack-ass  mute, 

A  burthen  brute, 
Just  fit  to  trot  with  packs  on,  O. 

Come  next,  sweet  Paddy  Rooney,  O, 
Come  next;  sweet  Paddy  Rooney,  O ; 

Tho'  if  you  stay 

Till  judgment's  day. 
You'll  come  a  month  too  soon-y,  O. 

Come  next,  sweet  Breeny  Creepmouse,  O, 
Come  next,  sweet  Breeny  Creepmouse,  O ; 

Thee  heaven  gave 

Just  sense  to  shave 
A  corpse,  or  an  asleep  mouse,  O. 

For  I  say,  creep-mouse  Breeny,  O, 
For  I  say,  creep.-mouse  Breeny,  O ; 

Thee  I  can't  sing 

The  fairy's  king. 
But  I'll  sing  you  their  Queen-y  O ; 

For  I  say,  Dr  Breeny,  O, 
For  I  say,  Dr  Breeny.  O ; 

If  I  for  once 

Called  you  a  dunce, 
I'd  shew  a  judgment  weeny,  O. 

Come,  Richards  dull  and  brazen,  O, 
Come,  Richards  dull  and  brazen,  O; 

A  prosperous  drone, 

You  stand  alone, 
For  wondering  sense  to  gaze  on,  O. 


Then  come,  you  greasy  blockhead,  O, 
Then  come,  you  greasy  blockhead,  O; 

Balked  by  your  face, 

We  quickly  trace. 
Your  genius  to  your  pocket,  O. 

Come,  Crampton,  man  of  capers,  O, 


388  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

Come,  Crampton,  man  of  capers,  O ; 

t  *  *  * 

And  come,  long  Doctor  Renney,  O, 
And  come,  long  Doctor  Renney,  O ; 

If  sick  I'd  fee 

As  soon  as  thee, 
Old  Arabella  Denny,  O. 

Come,  Tandragee  Ferguson,  O, 
Come,  Tandragee  Ferguson,  O  ; 

Fool,  don't  recoil. 

But  as  your  foil 
Bring  Ireland  or  Puke  Hewson,  O. 

Come,  ugly  Dr  Alman,  O, 
Come,  ugly  Dr  Alman,  O ; 

But  bring  a  mask. 

Or  do  not  ask, 
When  come,  that  we  you  call  man,  O. 
*  *  *  * 

Come,  Boyton,  king  of  dunces,  O, 
Come,  Boyton,  king  of  dunces,  O ; 

Who  call  you  knave 

No  lies  receive, 
Nay,  that  your  name  each  one  says,  O. 

Come,  CoUes,  do  come,  Aby,  O, 
Come,  Colles,  do  come,  Aby,  O ; 
Tho'  all  you  tell, 
You'll  make  them  well. 
You  always  'hould  say  may  be,  O. 

Come,  beastly  Dr  Toomy,  O, 
Come,  beastly  Dr  Toomy,  O ; 

if  impudence 

Was  common  sense 
As  you  no  sage  ere  knew  me,  O. 

Come,  smirking,  smiling  Beattie,  O, 
Come,  smirking,  smiling  Beattie,  O ; 

In  thee  I  spy 

An  apple  eye 
Of  cabbage  and  potaty,  O. 

Come,  louse-bit  Nasom  Adams,  O, 
Come,  louse-bit  Nasom  Adams,  O ; 
In  jail  or  dock 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  389 

Your  face  would  shock 
It  thee  as  base  and  bad  damns,  0. 

Come  next,  Frank  Smyth  on  cockney,  O, 
Come  next,  Frank  Smyth  on  cockney,  O; 

Sweet  London's  pride, 

I  see  you  ride, 
Despising  all  who  flock  nigh,  O. 

And  bring  your  partner  Bruen,  O, 
And  bring  your  partner  Brucn,  O; 

And  with  him  ride 

All  by  your  side, 
Like  two  fond  turtles  cooing,   O. 

Come  next.  Spilsberry  Deegan,  O, 
Come  next,  Spilsberry  Deegan,  O; 

With  grace  and  air 

Come  kill  the  fair, 
Your  like  we'll  never,  see  'gain,  O. 

Come,  Harry  Grattan  Douglass,  O, 
Come,  Harry  Grattan  Douglass,  O ; 

A  doctor's  name 

I  think  you  claim. 
With  right  than  my  dog  pug  less,  O. 

Come,  Oronoko  Harkan,  O, 
Come,  Oronoko  Harkan,  O; 

I  think  your  face 

Is  just  the  place 
God  fbc'd  the  blockhead's  mark  on,  O. 

Come,  Christ-denying  Taylor,   O, 
Come,  Christ-denying  Taylor,  O ; 

Hell  made  your  phiz 

On  man's  a  quiz. 
But  made  it  for  a  jailor,  O. 

Come,  Packwood,  come,  Carmichael,  O, 
Come,  Packwood,  come,  Carmichael,  O; 

Your  cancer-paste, 

The  fools  who  taste. 
Whom    it   kills   not   does   nigh    kill,   O. 

Come  next,  Adonis  Harty,  O, 

Come  next.  Adonis  Harty,  O ; 

Your  face  and  frame 


yyU  A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTOES. 

Shew  equal  claim, 
Tam  Veneri  quam  Marti,  O. 

Here  ends  my  song  on  Doctors,  O, 
Here  ends  my  song  on  Doctors,  O; 

Who,  when  all  damn'd 

In  hell  are  cramm'd, 
Will  beggar  all  the  Proctors,  O." 

Brenan  (to  do  him  justice)  was  as  ready  to  fell  a 
professional  antagonist  and  brother  with  a  bludgeon, 
hunting-whip,  or  pistol,  as  he  was  to  scarify  him 
\vith  doggerel.  He  was  as  bold  a  feUow  as  Dr.  Walsh, 
the  Hibernian  yEsculapius,  who  did  his  best  to  lay 
Dr.  Andrew  ilarshall  down  amongst  the  daisies  and 
the  dead  men.  Andrew  ilarshall,  when  a  divinity- 
student  at  Edinburgh,  was  insulted  (whilst  officiat- 
ing for  Stewart,  the  humanity  professor)  by  a  young- 
ster named  Macqueen.  The  insolence  of  the  lad  was 
punished  by  the  professor  (pro  tern.)  giving  him  a 
caning.  Smarting  with  the  indignity  offered  him, 
Macqueen  ran  home  to  his  father,  imploring  ven- 
geance; whereupon  the  irate  sire  promptly  sal- 
lied forth,  and  entering  Marshall's  lodgings,  ex- 
claimed:— 

"Are  you  the  scoundrel  that  dared  to  attack  my 
son?" 

"Draw  and  defend  yourself!"  screamed  the  di- 
vinity student,  springing  from  his  chair,  and  pre- 
senting a  sword-point  at  the  intruder's  breast.  Old 
Macqueen,  who  had  expected  to  have  to  deal  only 
with  a  timid  half-starved  usher  ready  to  crouch 
whiningly  under  personal  eastigation,  was  so  aston- 
ished at  this  reception  that  he  turned  and  fled  precipi- 
tately. This  little  affair  happened  in  1775.  As  a 
physician  Andrew  Marshall  was  not  less  valiant  than 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  391 

he  tad  been  when  a  student  of  theology.  On  Walsh 
challenging  him,  he  went  out  and  stood  up  at  ten 
paces  like  a  gentleman.  Walsh,  a  little  short  fellow, 
invisible  when  looked  at  side-ways,  put  himself  in 
the  regular  attitude,  shoulder  to  the  front.  Mar- 
shall disdained  such  mean  prudence,  and  faced  his 
would-be  murdered  with  his  cheeks  and  chest  inflated 
to  the  utmost.  Shots  were  exchanged.  Dr.  Andrew 
Marshall  receiving  a  ball  in  his  right  arm,  and  Dr. 
Walsh,  losing  a  lock  of  hair— snipped  off  by  his  op- 
ponent's bullet,  and  scattered  by  the  amorous  breeze. 
Being  thus  the  gainer  in  the  affair.  Dr.  Andrew  Mar- 
shall made  it  up  with  his  adversary,  and  they  lived  on 
friendly  terms  ever  afterwards.  Why  don't  some 
of  our  living  medici  bury  the  hatchet  with  a  like  ef- 
fective ceremony? 

An  affair  that  ended  not  less  agreeably  was  that 
in  which  Dr.  Brocklesby  was  concerned  as  principal, 
where  the  would-be  belligerents  left  the  ground  with- 
out exchanging  shots,  because  their  seconds  could  not 
agree  on  the  right  number  of  paces  at  which  to  stick 
up  their  man.  When  Akenside  was  fool  enough  to 
challenge  Ballow,  a  wicked  story  went  about  that 
the  fight  didn't  come  off  because  one  had  determined 
never  to  fight  in  the  morning,  and  the  other  that  he 
would  never  fight  in  the  afternoon.  But  the  fact 
was— Ballow  was  a  paltry  mean  fellow,  and  shirked 
the  peril  into  which  his  ill-manners  had  brought  him. 
The  lively  and  pleasant  author  of  "Physic  and  Phy- 
sicians," countenancing  this  unfair  story,  reminds  us 
of  the  off-hand  style  of  John  Wilkes  in  such  little 
affairs.     When  asked  by  Lord  Talbot  "How  many 


392  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

times  they  were  to  fire?"  the  brilliant  demago^e  re- 
sponded— 

"Just  as  often  as  your  Lordship  pleases— I  have 
brought  a  bag  of  bullets  and  a  flask  of  gunpowder 
with  me." 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 


THE  LOVES  OP  PHYSICIANS. 


Honour  'has  flowed  to  physicians  by  the  regular 
channels  of  professional  duty  in  but  scant  allowance. 
Their  children  have  been  frequently  ennobled  by  mar- 
riage or  for  political  services.  Sir  Hans  Sloane's 
daughter  Elizabeth,  and  manor  of  Chelsea,  passed 
into  the  Cadogan  family,  the  lady  marrying  the  sec- 
ond Baron  Cadogan.  Like  Sir  Hans,  Dr.  Huck  San- 
ders left  behind  him  two  daughters,  co-heiresses  of 
his  wealth,  of  whom  one  (Jane)  was  ennobled  through 
wedlock,  the  tenth  Earl  of  Westmoreland  raising  her 
to  be  his  second  wife.  Lord  Combermere  married 
the  heiress  of  Dr.  Gibbings,  of  Cork.  In  the  same 
way  Dr.  Marwood's  property  came  to  the  present  Sir 
Marwood  Elton  by  the  marriage  of  his  grandfather 
with  Frances,  the  daughter  and  heiress  of  the  Dev- 
onshire doctor.  On  the  other  hand,  as  instances  of 
the  offspring  of  physicians  exalted  to  the  ranks  of 
the  aristocracy  for  their  political  services,  the  Lords 
Sidmouth,  Denman,  and  Kingsdown  may  be  men- 
tioned. Henry  Addington,  created  Viscount  Sid- 
mouth, of  the  county  of  Devon,  was  the  eldest  son  of 


394  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

Anthony  Addington,  M.D.,  of  Reading— the  physi- 
cian who  objected  to  fighting  any  brother  physician 
w'ho  had  not  graduated  at  either  Oxford  or  Cam- 
bridge.   Dr.  Anthony  was  the  enthusiastic  toady  of 
the  great  Earl  of  Chatham.    Devoted  to  his  own  in- 
terests and  the  Pitt  family,  he  rose  from  the  humble 
position  of  keeper  of  a  provincial  lunatic  asylum  to 
eminence  in  the  medical  profession.     Coming  up  to 
town  in  1754,  under  the  patronage  of  Pitt,  he  suc- 
ceeded in  gaining  the  confidence  of  the  Court,  and 
was,  with  Dr.  Richard  "Warren,  Dr.  Francis  Willis, 
Dr.  Thomas  Gisborne,  Sir  Lucas  Pepys,  and  Dr.  Hen- 
ry Revell  Reynolds,  examined,  in  1782,  by  the  com- 
mittee appointed  to  examine  "the  physicians  who  at- 
tended his  illness,  touching  the  state  of  his  Majesty's 
health."    He  took  a  very  hopeful  view  of  the  king's 
case ;  and  on  being  asked  the  foundation  of  his  hopes, 
alluded  to  his  experience  in  the  treatment  of  the  in- 
sane at  Reading.     The  doctor  had  himself  a  passion 
for  political  intrigue,   which  descended   to  his  son. 
The  career  of  this  son,  who  raised  himself  to  the 
Speaker's  chair  in  the  House  of  Commons,  to  the  dig- 
nity of  First  Minister  of  the  Crown,  and  to  the  peer- 
age of  the  realm,  is  matter  of  history. 

Lord  Denman  was  closely  connected  with  the  med- 
ical profession  by  family  ties:  his  father  being  Dr. 
Denman,  of  Mount  Street,  Grosvenor  Square,  the  au- 
thor of  a  well-kno\\Ti  work  on  a  department  of  his 
profession;  his  uncle  being  Dr.  Joseph  Denman  of 
Bakewell;  and  his  two  sisters  having  married  two 
eminent  physicians,  Margaret  being  the  wife  of  Sir 
Richard  Croft,  Bart.,  and  Sophia  the  wife  of  Dr.  Bail- 
lie.     Lord   Kingsdown's  medical   ancestor   was  his 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  395 

grandfather,  Edward  Pemberton,  M.D.,  of  Warring- 
ton. 

But  though  the  list  of  the  ennobled  descendants 
of  medical  practitioners  might  be  extended  to  the  lim- 
its of  a  volume,  the  writer  of  these  pages  is  not  aware 
of  any  case  in  which  a  doctor  has,  by  the  exercise 
of  his  calling,  raised  himself  to  the  peerage.  As  yet, 
the  dignity  of  a  baronetcy  is  the  highest  honour  con- 
ferred on  the  most  illustrious  of  the  medical  faculty, 
Sir  Hans  Sloane  being  the  first  of  the  order  to  whom 
that  rank  was  presented.  More  than  once  a  physi- 
cian has  won  admission  into  the  noblesse,  but  the  bat- 
tle resulting  in  such  success  has  been  fought  in  the 
arena  of  politics  or  the  bustle  of  the  law  courts.  Syl- 
vester Douglas  deserted  the  counter,  at  which  he  com- 
menced life  an  apothecary,  and  after  a  prolonged 
servitude  to,  or  warfare  with,  the  cliques  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  had  his  exertions  rewarded  and  his  am- 
bition gratified  with  an  Irish  peerage  and  a  patrician 
wife.  On  his  elevation  he  was  of  course  taunted  with 
the  humility  of  his  origin,  and  by  none  was  the  re- 
proach flung  at  him  with  greater  bitterness  than  it 
was  by  a  brother  parvenu  and  brother  poet. 

"What's  his  title  to  be?"  asked  Sheridan,  as  he 
was  playing  at  cards;  "what's  Sylvester  Douglas  to 
be  called?" 

"Lord  Glenbervie,"  was  the  answer. 

' '  Good  Lord ! ' '  replied  Sheridan ;  and  then  he  pro- 
ceeded to  fire  off  an  impromptu,  which  he  had  that 
morning  industriously  prepared  in  bed,  and  w'hich 
he  subsequently  introduced  into  one  of  'his  best  satiric 
pieces. 


396  A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

"Glenbcrvie,  Glenbervie, 

What's  good  for  the  scurvy? 
For  ne'er  be  your  old  trade  forgot. 

In  your  arms  rather  quarter 

A  pestle  and  mortar, 
And  your  crest  be  a  spruce  gallipot." 

The  brilliant  partizan  and  orator  displayed  more 
wit,  if  not  better  taste,  in  his  ridicule  of  Addington, 
who,  in  allusion  to  the  rise  of  his  father  from  a  hum- 
ble position  in  the  medical  profession,  was  ordinarily 
spoken  of  by  political  opponents  as  "The  Doctor." 
On  one  occasion,  when  the  Scotch  members  who  us- 
ually supported  Addington  voted  in  a  body  with  the 
opposition,  Sheridan,  with  a  laug'h  of  triumph,  fired 
off  a  happy  mis-quotation  from  Macbeth,— "Doctor, 
the  Thanes  fly  from  thee. ' ' 

Henry  Bickersteth,  Lord  Langdale,  was  the  luck- 
iest of  physicians  and  lawyers.  He  used  the  medical 
profession  as  a  stepping-stone,  and  the  legal  profes- 
sion as  a  ladder,  and  had  the  fortune  to  win  two  of 
the  brightest  prizes  of  life— wealth  and  a  peerage— 
without  the  humiliation  and  toil  of  serving  a  political 
party  in  the  House  of  Commons.  The  second  son  of 
a  provincial  surgeon,  he  was  apprenticed  to  his  fath- 
er, and  educated  for  the  paternal  calling.  On  being 
qualified  to  kill,  he  became  medical  attendant  to  the 
late  Earl  of  Oxford,  during  that  nobleman's  travels 
on  the  Continent.  Returning  to  his  native  town,  Kir- 
by  Lonsdale,  he  for  awhile  assisted  his  father  in  the 
management  of  his  practice ;  but  resolved  on  a  differ- 
ent career  from  that  of  a  country  doctor,  he  became 
a  member  of  Caius  College,  Cambridge,  and  devoted 
himself  to  mathematical  study  with  such  success  that, 
in  1808,  when  he  was  twenty-eight  years  old,  he  be- 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTOES.  397 

came  Senior  Wrangler  and  First  Smith's  prizeman. 
As  late  as  the  previous  year  he  was  consulted  medi- 
cally by  his  father.  In  1811  he  was  called  to  the  bar 
by  the  Inner  Temple,  and  from  that  time  till  his  ele- 
vation to  the  Mastership  of  the  Rolls  he  was  both  the 
most  hard-working  and  hard-worked  of  the  lawyers 
in  the  Equity  Courts,  to  which  he  confined  his  prac- 
tice. In  1827  he  became  a  bencher  of  his  Inn;  and, 
in  1835,  although  he  was  a  staunch  and  zealous  lib- 
eral, and  a  strenuous  advocate  of  Jeremy  Bentham's 
opinions,  he  was  offered  a  seat  on  the  judicial  bench 
by  Sir  Robert  Peel.  This  offer  he  declined,  though 
he  fully  appreciated  the  compliment  paid  him  by 
the  Tory  chieftain.  He  had  not,  however,  to  wait 
long  for  his  promotion.  In  the  following  year  (1836) 
he  was,  by  his  own  friends,  made  Master  of  the  Rolls, 
and  created  a  peer  of  the  realm,  with  the  additional 
honour  of  being  a  Privy-Councillor.  His  Lordship 
died  at  Tunbridge  Wells,  in  1851,  in  his  sixty-eighth 
year.  It  would  be  difficult  to  point  to  a  more  enviable 
career  in  legal  annals  than  that  of  this  medical  law- 
yer, who  won  the  most  desirable  honours  of  his  pro- 
fession without  ever  sitting  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
or  acting  as  a  legal  adviser  of  the  Crown— and  when 
he  had  not  been  called  quite  twenty-five  years.  To 
give  another  touch  to  this  picture  of  a  successful 
life,  it  may  be  added,  that  Lord  Langdale,  after  rising 
to  eminence,  married  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  the  Earl 
of  Oxford,  to  whom  he  had  formerly  been  travelling 
medical  attendant. 

Love  has  not  unfrequently  smiled  on  doctors,  and 
elevated  them  to  positions  at  which  tihey  would  never 
have  arrived  by  their  professional  labours.    Sir  Lucas 


J98  A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTOES. 

Pepys,  who  married  the  Countess  De  Rothes,  and  Sir 
Henry  Halford,  whose  wife  was  a  daughter  of  the 
eleventh  Lord  St.  John  of  Blestoe,  are  conspicuous 
amongst  the  more  modem  instances  of  medical  prac- 
titioners advancing  their  social  condition  by  aristo- 
cratic alliances.  Not  less  fortunate  was  the  farcical 
Sir  John  Hill,  who  gained  for  a  bride  the  Honoura- 
ble Miss  Jones,  a  daughter  of  Lord  Ranelagh— a  no- 
bleman whose  eccentric  opinion,  that  the  welfare  of 
the  country  required  a  continual  intermixture  of  the 
upper  and  lower  classes  of  society,  was  a  frequent  ob- 
ject of  ridicule  with  the  caricaturists  and  lampoon- 
writers  of  his  time.  But  the  greatest  prize  ever  made 
by  an  ^Slsculapius  in  the  marriage-market  was  that 
acquired  by  Sir  Hugh  Smithson,  who  won  the  hand  of 
Percy's  proud  heiress,  and  was  created  Duke  of 
Northumberland.  The  son  of  a  Yorkshire  baronet's 
younger  son,  Hugh  Smithson  was  educated  for  an 
apothecary— a  vocation  about  the  same  time  followed 
for  several  years  by  Sir  Thomas  Geery  Cullum,  be- 
fore he  succeeded  to  the  family  estate  and  dignity. 
Hugh  Smithson 's  place  of  business  was  Hatton  Gar- 
den, but  the  length  of  time  that  he  there  presided  over 
a  pestle  and  mortar  is  uncertain.  In  1736  he  became 
a  Fellow  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries,  but  he  with- 
drew from  that  learned  body,  on  the  books  of  which 
his  signature  may  be  found,  in  the  year  1740.  A  few 
months  after  this  secession,  Sir  Hugh  led  to  the  altar 
the  only  child  and  heiress  of  Algernon  Seymour, 
Duke  of  Somerset.  There  still  lives  a  tradition  that 
the  lady  made  the  offer  to  Sir  Hugh  immediately  after 
his  rejection  by  a  famous  belle  of  private  rank  and 
modest  wealth.    Another  version  of  the  story  is  that. 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  399 

when  she  heard  of  his  disappointment,  she  observed 
publicly,  "that  the  disdainful  beauty  was  a  fool,  and 
that  no  Other  woman  in  England  would  be  guilty  of 
like  folly. ' '  On  hearing  this,  the  baronet,  a  singular- 
ly handsome  man,  took  courage  to  sue  for  that  to 
which  men  of  far  higher  rank  would  not  have  pre- 
sumed to  aspire.  The  success  that  followed  his  dar- 
ing, of  course,  brought  upon  him  the  arrows  of  envy. 
He  had  won  so  much,  however,  that  he  could,  with- 
out ill-humour,  bear  being  laughed  at.  On  being 
created  Duke  of  Northumberland  in  1766,  he  could 
afford  to  smile  at  a  proposition  that  his  coronet 
should  be  surrounded  with  senna,  instead  of  straw- 
berry-leaves; for,  however  much  obscure  jealousy 
might  affect  to  contemn  him,  he  was  no  fit  object  for 
disdain— but  a  gentleman  of  good  intellect  and  a 
lordly  presence,  and  (though  he  had  mixed  drugs 
behind  a  counter)  descended  from  an  old  and  hon- 
ourable family.  The  reproach  of  being  a  Smithson, 
and  no  Percy,  had  more  force  when  applied  to  the 
second  duke  in  the  Anti-Jacobin,  than  it  had  when 
hurled  vindictively  at  the  ex-doctor  himself  by  the 
mediocrities  of  the  beau  monde,  whom  he  had  beaten 
on  their  own  ground  by  superior  attractions  and  ac- 
complishments. 

"Nay,"  quoth   the  Duke,  "in  thy  black  scroll 

Deductions  I  espye — 
For  those  who,  poor,  and  mean,  and  low, 

With  children  burthen'd  lie. 

"And  though  full  sixty  thousand  pounds 
My  vassals  pay  to  me. 
From  Cornwall  to  Northumberland, 
Through  many  a  fair  countree; 

"Yet  England's  church,  its  king,  its  laws. 
Its  cause  I  value  not. 


400  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

Compared  with  this,  my  constant  text, 
A  penny  saved  is  got. 

"No  drop  of  princely  Percy's  blood 
Through  these  cold  veins  doth  run; 
With  Hotspur's  castles,  blazon,  name, 
I  still  am  poor  Smithson." 

Considering  the  opportunities  that  medical  men 
have  for  pressing  a  suit  in  love,  and  the  many  tempta- 
tions to  gentle  emotion  that  they  experience  in  the 
aspect  of  feminine  suffering,  and  the  confiding  grati- 
tude of  their  fair  patients,  it  is  perhaps  to  be  won- 
dered at  that  only  one  medical  duke  is  to  be  found 
in  the  annals  of  the  peerage.  When  Swift's  Stella 
vas  on  her  death-bed,  her  physician  said,  encourag- 
ingly— "Madam,  you  are  certainly  near  the  bottom  of 
the  hill,  but  we  shall  endeavour  to  get  you  up  once 
more,"  the  naive  reply  of  the  poor  lady  was,  "Doc- 
tor, I  am  afraid  I  shall  be  out  of  breath  before  I  get 
to  the  top  again."  Not  less  touching  was  the  fear 
expressed  by  Steele's  merry  daughter  to  her  doctor, 
that  she  should  "die  before  the  holidays."  Both  Stel- 
la and  Sir  Richard's  child  had  left  their  personal 
charms  behind  them  when  they  so  addressed  their 
physicians;  but  imagine,  my  brother,  what  the  effect 
of  such  words  would  be  on  your  susceptible  heart, 
if  they  came  from  the  lips  of  a  beautiful  girl. 
Would  you  not  (think  you)  try  to  win  other  such 
speeches  from  her  ?— and  if  you  tried,  dear  sir,  surely 
you  would  succeed ! 

Prudence  would  order  a  physician,  endowed  with 
a  heart,  to  treat  it  in  the  same  way  as  Dr.  Glynn 
thought  a  cucumber  ought  to  be  dressed— to  slice  it 
very  thin,  pepper  it  plentifully,  pour  upon  it  plenty 
of  the  best  vinegar,  and  then— throw  it  away.    A  doc- 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  401 

tor  has  qiiite  enough  work  on  his  hands  to  keep  the 
affections  of  his  patients  in  cheek,  without  having  to 
mount  guard  over  his  own  emotions.  Thackeray  says 
that  girls  make  love  in  the  nursery,  and  practise  the 
arts  of  coquetry  on  the  page-boy  who  brings  the  coals 
upstairs— a  hard  saying  for  simple  young  gentlemen 
triumphing  in  the  possession  of  a  first  love.  The 
writer  of  these  pages  could  point  to  a  fair  dame,  who 
enjoys  rank  amongst  the  highest  and  wealth  equal  to 
the  station  assigned  her  by  the  heralds,  who  not  only 
aimed  tender  glances,  and  sighed  amorously  to  a 
young  waxen-faced,  blue-eyed  apothecary,  but  even 
went  so  far  as  to  write  him  a  letter  proposing  an 
elopement,  and  other  merry  arrangements,  in  which 
a  carriage,  everlastingly  careering  over  the  country 
at  the  heels  of  four  horses,  bore  a  conspicuous  part. 
The  silly  maiden  had,  like  Dinah,  "a  fortune  in 
silvyer  and  gold,"  amounting  to  £50,000,  and  her 
blue-eyed  Adonis  was  twice  her  age ;  but  fortunately 
he  was  a  gentleman  of  honour,  and,  without  divulg- 
ing the  mad  proposition  of  the  young  lady,  he  induced 
her  father  to  take  her  away  for  twelve  months' 
change  of  air  and  scene.  Many  years  since  the 
heroine  of  this  little  episode,  after  she  had  become 
the  wdfe  of  a  very  great  man,  and  the  mother  of 
children  who  bid  fair  to  become  ornaments  to  their 
illustrious  race,  expressed  her  gratitude  cordially  to 
this  Joseph  of  the  doctors,  for  his  magnanimity  in 
not  profiting  by  the  absurd  fancies  of  a  child,  and  the 
delicacy  with  "which  he  had  taken  prompt  measures 
for  her  happiness ;  and,  more  recently,  she  manifested 
her  good  will  to  the  man  who  had  offered  her  what  is 
generally  regarded  as  the  greatest  insult  a  woman  can 

4—26 


402  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

experience,  by  procuring  a  commission  in  the  army 
for  his  eldest  son. 

The  embarrassments  Sir  John  Eliot  suffered  under 
from  the  emotional  overtures  of  his  fair  patients  are 
well  known.  St.  John  Long  himself  had  not  more  ad- 
mirers amongst  the  elite  of  high-born  English  ladies. 
The  king  had  a  strong  personal  dislike  to  Sir  John, 
—a  dislike  possibly  heightened  by  a  feeling  that  it 
was  sheer  impudence  in  a  doctor  to  capture  without 
an  effort  the  hearts  of  half  the  prettiest  women 
amongst  his  subjects— and  then  shrug  his  shoulders 
with  chagrin  at  his  success.  Lord  George  Germain 
had  hard  work  to  wring  a  baronetcy  out  of  his  Majes- 
ty for  this  victim  of  misplaced  affection. 

"Well,"  said  the  king,  at  last  grudgingly  prom- 
ising to  make  Eliot  a  baronet— "my  Lord,  since  you 
desire  it,  let  it  be;  but  remember  he  shall  not  be  my 
physician." 

"No,  sir,"  answered  Lord  George— "he  shall  be 
your  Majesty's  baronet,  and  my  physician." 

Amongst  other  plans  Sir  John  resorted  to,  to  scare 
away  his  patients  and  patronesses,  he  had  a  death's- 
head  painted  on  his  carriage-panels;  but  the  result 
of  this  eccentric  measure  on  his  practice  and  on  his 
sufferings  was  the  reverse  of  what  he  desired.  One 
lady — the  daughter  of  a  noble  member  of  a  Cabinet 
—ignorant  that  he  was  otherwise  occupied,  made 
him  an  offer,  and  on  learning  to  her  astonishment 
that  he  was  a  married  man,  vowed  that  she  would  not 
rest  till  she  had  assassinated  his  wife. 

Poor  Radcliffe's  loves  were  of  a  less  flattering  sort, 
though  they  resembled  Sir  John  Eliot's  in  respect  of 
being  instances  of  reciprocity  all  on  one  side.    But  the 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  403 

amorous  follies  of  Radcliffe,  ludicrous  though  they 
became  under  the  touches  of  Steele's  pen,  are  dig- 
nified and  manly  when  compared  with  the  senile 
freaks  of  Dr.  Mead,  whose  highest  delight  was  to  comb 
the  hair  of  the  lady  on  whom,  for  the  time  being,  his 
affections  were  set. 

Dr.  Cadogan,  of  Charles  the  Second's  time,  was, 
like  Sir  John  Eliot,  a  favourite  with  the  ladies.  His 
wont  was  to  spend  his  days  in  shooting  and  his  even- 
ings in  flirtation.  To  the  former  of  these  tastes  the 
following  lines  refer:  — 

"Doctor,  all  game  you  either  ought  to  shun, 
Or  sport  no  longer  with  the  unsteady  gun; 
But  like  physicians  of  undoubted  skill, 
Gladly  attempt  what  never  fails  to  kill. 
Not  lead's  uncertain  dross,  but  physic's  deadly  pill." 

Whether  he  was  a  good  shot  we  cannot  say ;  but  he 
was  sufficiently  adroit  as  a  squire  of  dames,  for  he 
secured  as  his  wife  a  wealthy  lady,  over  whose  prop- 
erty he  had  unfettered  control.  Against  the  money, 
however,  there  were  two  important  points  figuring 
under  the  head  of  "set-off"— the  bride  was  old  and 
querulous.  Of  course  such  a  woman  was  unfitted  to 
live  happily  with  an  eminent  physician,  on  whom 
bevies  of  court  ladies  smiled  whenever  he  went  west 
of  Charing  Cross.  After  spending  a  few  months  in 
alternate  fits  of  jealous  hate  and  jealous  fondness, 
the  poor  creature  conceived  the  terrible  fancy  that 
her  husband  was  bent  on  destroying  her  with  poison, 
and  so  ridding  his  life  of  her  execrable  temper.  One 
day,  when  surrounded  by  her  friends,  and  in  the 
presence  of  her  lord  and  master,  she  fell  on  her 
back  in  a  state  of  hysterical  spasms,  exclaiming:  — 

"Ah!  he  has  killed  me  at  last.    I  am  poisoned!" 


•iOi  A   BOOK   -VBOUT    DOCTORS. 

"Poisoned!"  cried  the  lady-friends,  turning  up  the 
whites  of  their  eyes.  "Oh!  gracious  goodness!— you 
have  done  it,  doctor!" 

"What  do  you  accuse  me  of?"  asked  the  doctor, 
with  surprise. 

"I  accuse  you— of— killing  me— ee,"  responded 
the  wife,  doing  her  best  to  imitate  a  death-strug- 
gle. 

"Ladies,"  answered  the  doctor,  with  admirable 
nonchalance,  bowing  to  Mrs.  Cadogan's  bosom  asso- 
ciates, "it  is  perfectly  false.  You  are  quite  welcome 
to  open  her  at  once,  and  then  you'll  discover  the 
calumny." 

John  Hunter  administered  a  scarcely  less  startling 
reproof  to  his  wife,  who,  though  devoted  in  her  at- 
tachment to  him,  and  in  every  respect  a  lady  worthy 
of  esteem,  caused  her  husband  at  times  no  little  vexa- 
tion by  her  fondness  for  society.  She  was  in  the  habit 
of  giving  enormous  routs,  at  which  authors  and  ar- 
tists, of  all  shades  of  merit  and  demerit,  used  to  as- 
semble to  render  homage  to  her  literary  powers, 
which  were  very  far  from  common-place.  A  lasting 
popularity  has  attested  the  excellence  of  her  song:— 

"My  mother  bids  me  bind  my  hair 
With  bands  of  rosy  hue; 
Tie  up  my  sleeves  with  ribbons  rare, 
And  lace  my  boddice  blue. 

"  'For  why,'  she  cries,  'sit  still  and  weep, 

While  others  dance  and  play?' 
Alas !  I  scarce  can  go  or  creep. 
While  Lubin  is  away. 

"  'Tis  sad  to  think  the  days  are  gone. 

When  those  we  love  are  near ; 
I  sit  upon  this  mossy  stone, 
And  sigh  when  none  can  hear. 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  405 

"And  while  I  spin  my  flaxen  thread, 
And  sing  my  simple  lay, 
The  village  seems  asleep  or  dead. 
Now  Lubin  is  away." 

John  Hunter  had  no  sympathy  with  his  wife 's  poet- 
ical aspirations,  still  less  with  the  society  which  those 
aspirations  led  her  to  cultivate.  Grudging  the  time 
which  the  labours  of  practice  prevented  him  from 
devoting  to  the  pursuits  of  his  museum  and  labora- 
tory he  could  not  restrain  his  too  irritable  temper 
when  Mrs.  Hunter's  frivolous  amusements  deprived 
him  of  the  quiet  requisite  for  study.  Even  the  fee 
of  a  patient  who  called  him  from  his  dissecting  in- 
struments could  not  reconcile  him  to  the  interruption. 
"I  must  go,"  he  would  say  reluctantly  to  his  friend 
Lynn,  when  the  living  summoned  him  from  his  in- 
vestigations among  the  dead,  "and  earn  this  d d 

guinea,  or  I  shall  be  sure  to  want  it  to-morrow." 
Imagine  the  wrath  of  such  a  man,  finding,  on  his  re- 
turn from  a  long  day's  work,  his  house  full  of  musical 
professors,  connoisseurs,  and  fashionable  idlers— in 
fact,  all  the  confusion  and  hubbub  and  heat  of  a 
grand  party,  which  his  lady  had  forgotten  to  inform 
him  was  that  evening  to  come  off !  Walking  straight 
into  the  middle  of  the  principal  reception-room,  he 
faced  round  and  surveyed  his  unwelcome  guests,  who 
were  not  a  little  surprised  to  see  him— dusty,  toil- 
worn,  and  grim— so  unlike  what  "the  man  of  the 
house"  ought  to  be  on  such  an  occasion. 

' '  I  knew  nothing, ' '  was  his  brief  address  to  the  as- 
tounded crowd— "I  knew  nothing  of  this  kick-up, 
and  T  ought  to  have  been  informed  of  it  beforehand ; 
but,  as  I  have  now  returned  home  to  study,  I  hope  the 
present  company  will  retire." 


406  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

Mrs  Hunter's  drawing-rooms  were  speedily  empty. 

One  of  the  drollest  love  stories  in  medical  ana  is 
that  which  relates  to  Dr.  Thomas  Dawson,  a  century 
since  alike  admired  by  the  inhabitants  of  Hackney 
as  a  pulpit  orator  and  a  physician.  Dawson  was 
originally  a  Suffolk  worthy,  unconnected,  however, 
•with  the  eccentric  John  Dawson,  who,  in  the  reign 
of  Charles  the  Second,  was  an  apothecary  in  the  pleas- 
ant old  town  of  Framlingham,  in  that  county.  His 
fathei;  a  dissenting  minister,  had  seven  sons,  and 
educated  six  of  them  for  the  Nonconformist  pulpit. 
Of  these  six,  certainly  three  joined  the  Established 
Church,  and  became  rectors— two  of  the  said  three, 
Benjamin  and  Abraham,  being  controversial  writers 
of  considerable  merit.  Thomas  Dawson  adhered  to 
the  tenets  of  his  father,  and,  combining  the  vocations 
of  divine  and  physic-man,  preached  on  Sundays,  and 
doctored  during  the  rest  of  the  week.  He  was  Mead 
and  Mead's  father  in  one:  though  the  conditions  of 
human  existence,  which  render  it  impossible  for  one 
person  to  be  in  two  places  at  the  same  time,  pre- 
vented him  from  leaving  chapel  to  visit  his  patients, 
and  the  next  minute  urging  the  congregation  to  offer 
up  a  prayer  for  the  welfare  of  the  unfortunate  suffer- 
ers. Amongst  the  doctor's  circle  of  acquaintance 
Miss  Corbett  of  Hackney  was  at  the  same  time  the 
richest,  the  most  devout,  and  the  most  afflicted  in 
bodily  health.  Ministering  to  her  body  and  soul,  Dr. 
Dawson  had  frequent  occasions  for  visiting  her.  One 
day  he  found  her  alone,  sitting  with  the  large  fam- 
ily Bible  before  her,  meditating  on  perhaps  the  grand- 
est chapter  in  all  the  Old  Testament.  The  doctor 
read  the  words  to  which  the  forefinger  of  her  right 


A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  407 

hand    pointed— the    words    of    Nathan    to    David: 
"Thou  art  the  man."    The  doctor  took  the  hint;  and 
on  the  29th  of  May,  1758,  he  found  a  wife— and  the 
pious  lady  won  a  husband.     The  only  offspring  of 
this  strange  match  was  one  son,  a  Mr.  Dawson,  who 
still  resides  at  a  very  advanced  age  of  life  in  the 
charming  \aUage   of  Botesdale,  in    Suffolk.     When 
the  writer  of  these  pages  was  a  happy  little  boy,  mak- 
ing his  first  acquaintance  with  Latin  and  Greek,  at 
the  Botesdale  Grammar  School,  then  presided  over 
by  the  pious,  manly,  and  gentle ,  he  was  an  es- 
pecial pet  with  Mr.  Dawson.    The  worthy  gentleman's 
little  house   was  in   the   centre   of  a  large  garden, 
densely  stocked  with  apple  and  other  fruit  trees ;  and 
in  it  he  led  a  very  retired  life,  visited  by  only  a  very 
few  friends,  and  tended  by  two  or  three  servants— 
of  whom  one,  an  ancient  serving  man,  acted  as  a 
valet,  gardener,  and  groom  to  an  antique  horse  which 
constituted    Mr.    Dawson's    entire    stud.     The  small 
urchin  before-mentioned  had  free  access  at  all  times 
to  the  venerable  gentleman,  and  used  to  bring  him  the 
gossip  of  the  town  and  school,  in  exchange  for  ap- 
ples and  other  substantial  gifts.     Thin  and  attenu- 
ated,   diminutive,   so    as    to    be   little   more   than   a 
dwarf,  with  vagrant  eager  eye,  hooked  as  to  his  nose, 
and  with  a  long  beard,  snowy-white,  streaming  over 
his  waistcoat,  the  octogenarian  used  to  receive  his 
fair-haired  child-visitor.    May  he  be  happy— as  may 
all  old  gentlemen  be,  who  are  kind  to  little  schoolboys, 
and  give  them  apples  and  "tips!" 

The  day  that  Abernethy  was  married  he  went  dowTi 
to  the  lecture-room  to  deliver  his  customary  instruc- 
tion to  his  pupils.    His  selection  of  a  wife  was  as  ju- 


408  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

dicious  as  his  marriage  was  happy;  and  the  funny 

stories  for  long  current  about  the  mode  in  which  he 
made  his  offer  are  IcnowTi  to  be  those  most  delusive 
of  fabrications,  fearless  and  extreme  exaggerations 
of  a  little  particle  of  the  truth.  The  brutality  of 
procedure  attributed  to  the  great  surgeon  by  current 
rumour  was  altogether  foreign  to  his  nature.  The 
Abernethy  biscuit  was  not  more  audaciously  pinned 
upon  his  reputation,  than  was  the  absurd  falsehood 
that  when  he  made  his  offer  to  his  future  wife  he  had 
only  seen  her  once,  and  then  wrote  saying  he  should 
like  to  marry  her,  but  as  he  was  too  busy  to  "make 
love, ' '  she  must  entertain  his  proposal  without  further 
preliminaries,  and  let  him  know  her  decision  by  the 
end  of  the  week. 

Of  Sir  John  Eliot  the  fortunate,  mention  has  al- 
ready been  made  in  this  chapter.  Let  us  now  speak 
of  John  Eliot,  the  luckless  hero  of  a  biography  pub- 
lished in  1787,  under  the  title  of  "A  Narrative  of 
the  Life  and  Death  of  John  Eliot,  M.D.,  containing 
an  account  of  the  Rise,  Progress,  and  Catastrophe  of 
his  unhappy  passion  for  Miss  Mary  Boydell."  A 
native  of  Somersetshire,  John  Elliot  wrote  a  tragedy 
when  only  twelve  years  of  age,  and  after  serving  an 
apprenticeship  to  a  London  apothecary,  fell  in  love 
with  one  Miss  Mary  Boydell,  a  niece  of  a  city  alder- 
man. The  course  of  this  gentleman 's  love  ran  smooth- 
ly till  he  chanced,  by  evil  fortune,  to  read  an  an- 
nouncement in  a  newspaper,  that  a  Miss  Boydell  had, 
on  the  previous  day,  been  led  to  the  altar  by  some 
gentleman— not  called  Dr.  John  Elliot,  certainly  not 
himself.  Never  doubting  that  the  Miss  Boydell  of 
the   newspaper   was    his   Miss   Boydell,   the    doctor, 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  409 

■without  making  any  further  inqiiiries  after  the  per- 
fidious fair  one,  sold  his  shop  and  fixtures,  and  ran 
off  from  the  evil  city  of  heartless  women,  to  com- 
mune with  beasts  of  the  field  and  birds  of  the  air  in 
sylvan  retirement.  Not  a  little  chagrined  was  Miss 
Boydell  at  the  sudden  disappearance  of  her  ideal 
apothecary,  whom  her  uncle,  the  alderman,  stigma- 
tized in  round,  honest,  indignant  language,  as  a  big 
blackguard.  After  twelve  years  spent  in  wandering, 
"a  forlorn  wretch,  over  the  kingdom,"  Dr.  Elliott 
returned  to  London,  set  up  once  more  in  business, 
and  began,  for  a  second  time,  to  drive  a  thriving 
trade,  when  Delilah  again  crossed  his  path.  "One 
day,"  he  says,  telling  his  own  story,  "entering  my 
shop  (for  I  had  commenced  again  the  business  of 
apothecary)  I  found  two  ladies  sitting  there,  one  of 
whom  I  thought  I  could  recognize.  As  soon  as  she 
observed  me,  she  cried  out,  'Mr.  Elliot!  Mr.  Elliot!' 
and  fell  back  in  a  swoon.  The  well-known  voice 
struck  me  like  a  shock  of  electricity— my  affections 
instantly  gushed  forth— I  fell  senseless  at  her  feet. 
When  I  eame  to  myself,  I  found  Miss  Boydell  sitting 
by  my  side."  And  his  Miss  Boydell  was  Miss  Boy- 
dell still— innocent  of  wedlock. 

Imogens  being  proved  true,  and  Alonzo  having 
come  to  life,  the  youthful  couple  renewed  the  en- 
gagement entered  into  more  than  twelve  years  be- 
fore. The  wedding-day  was  fixed,  the  wedding- 
clothes  were  provided,  when  uncle  (the  alderman), 
distrustful  that  his  niece's  scranny  lover  would  make 
a  good  husband,  induced  her  at  the  last  moment  to 
jilt  him,  and  marry  Mr.  Nicols,  an  opulent  book- 
seller.    The  farce  was   now  to   wear   an   aspect  of 


4IO  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

tragedy.  Infuriated  at  being,  after  all,  really  de- 
ceived, Dr.  Elliot  bought  two  brace  of  pistols,  and 
bound  them  together  in  pairs.  One  pair  he  loaded 
only  with  powder;  into  the  other  he  put  the  proper 
quantum  of  lead,  as  well  as  the  pernicious  dust. 
Armed  with  these  weapons,  he  lay  in  wait  for  the 
destroyer  of  his  peace.  After  some  days  of  watching 
he  saw  her  in  Prince's  Street,  walking  with  the  tri- 
umphant Nicols.  Rushing  up,  he  fired  at  her  the 
two  pistols  (not  loaded  with  ball),  and  then  snatch- 
ing the  other  brace  from  his  pocket,  was  proceeding 
to  commit  suicide,  when  he  was  seized  by  the  bystand- 
ers and  disarmed. 

The  next  scene  in  the  drama  was  the  principal  court 
of  the  Old  Bailey,  w-ith  Dr.  Elliot  in  the  dock,  charged 
with  an  attempt  to  murder  Miss  Boydell.  The  jury, 
being  satisfied  that  the  pistols  were  not  loaded  with 
ball,  and  that  the  prisoner  only  intended  to  create 
a  startling  impression  on  Miss  Boydell 's  mind,  ac- 
quitted liim  of  that  charge,  and  he  was  remanded 
to  prison  to  take  his  trial  for  a  common  assault.  Be- 
fore this  second  inquiry,  however,  could  come  off,  the 
poor  man  died  in  Newgate,  July  22,  1787,  of  a  broken 
heart— or  jail  fever.  Ere  his  death,  he  took  a  cruel 
revenge  of  the  lady,  by  writing  an  autobiographic 
account  of  his  love  experiences,  in  which  appeared 
the  following  passage:— "Fascinated  as  I  was  by  the 
charms  of  this  faithless  woman,  I  had  long  ceased  to 
be  sensible  to  these  defects,  or  rather  my  impassioned 
imagination  had  converted  them  into  perfections. 
But  those  who  did  not  labour  under  the  power  of 
this  magic  were  struck  by  her  ungraceful  exterior, 
and  mine  ears  have  not  unfrequently  been  shocked  to 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  411 

hear  the  tongue  of  indifference  pronounce  that  the 
object  of  my  passion  was  ugly  and  deformed.  Add 
to  this,  that  Miss  Boydell  has  long  since  ceased  to 
boast  the  bloom  of  youth,  and  then  let  any  person, 
impartial  and  unprejudiced,  decide  whether  a  passion 
for  her,  so  violent  as  that  I  have  manifested,  could 
be  the  produce  of  a  slight  and  recent  acquaintance, 
or  whether  it  must  not  rather  be  the  consequence  of 
a  long  habit  and  inveterate  intimacy."  Such  was 
the  absurd  sad  story  of  John  Elliot,  author  of  "The 
l\redical  Almanack,"  "Elements  of  the  Branches  of 
Natural  Philosophy,"  and  "Experiments  and  Obser- 
vations on  Light  and  Colours." 

The  mournful  love-story  of  Dr.  John  Elliot  made  a 
deep  impression  on  the  popular  mind.  It  is  found  al- 
luded to  in  ballads  and  chap-books,  and  more  than 
one  penny  romance  was  framed  upon  it.  Not  improb- 
ably it  suggested  the  composition  of  the  following 
parody  of  Monk  Lewis's  "Alonzo  the  Brave  and  the 
Fair  Imogene,"  which  appeared  at  the  close  of  the 
last  century,  during  the  first  run  of  popularity  which 
that  familiar  ballad  obtained:— 

"GILES  BOLUS  THE  KN.WE  AND  BROWN 
SALLY  GREEN. 

"a  romance  by  m.  g.  lewis. 

"A  Doctor  so  grave  and  a  virgin  so  bright, 

Hob-a-nobbed  in  some  right  marasquin; 
They  swallowed  the  cordial  with  truest  delight, 
Giles  Bolus  the  knave  was  just  five  feet  in  height. 

And  four  feet  the  brown  Sally  Green. 

"  'And  as,'  said  Giles  Bolus,  'to-morrow  I  go 
To  physic  a  feverish  land. 
At  some  sixpenny  hop,  or  perhaps  the  mayor's  show, 
You'll  tumble  in  love  with  some  smart  city  beau, 
And  with  him  share  your  shop  in  the  Strand.' 


412  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

"'Lord!  how  can  you  think  so?'  Brown  Sally  Green  said, 

'You  must  know  mighty  little  of  me; 
For  if  you  be  living,  or  if  you  be  dead. 
I  swear,  'pon  my  honour,  that  none  in  your  stead. 

Shall  husband  of  Sally  Green  be. 

"'And  if  e'er  I  by  love  or  by  wealth  led  aside 

Am  false  to  Giles  Bolus  the  knave; 
God  grant  that  at  dinner  so  amply  suppH'd, 
Over-eating  may  give  me  a  pain  in  the  side, 
May  your  ghost  then  bring  rhubarb  to  physic  the  bride, 

And  send  her  well-dosed  to  the  grave.' 

"To  Jamaica  the  doctor  now  hastened  for  gold, 
Sally  wept  till  she  blew  her  nose  sore; 
Yet  scarce  had  a  twelvemonth  elaps'd,  when  behold  I 
A  brewer  quite  stylish  his  gig  that  way  roU'd, 
And  stopped  it  at  Sally  Green's  door. 

"His  barrels,  his  bungs,  and  his  brass-headed  cane. 

Soon  made  her  untrue  to  his  vows; 
The  stream  of  small  beer  now  bewildered  her  brain; 
He  caught  her  while  tipsy — denials  were  vain — 

So  he  carried  her  home  as  his  spouse. 

"And  now  the  roast-beef  had  been  blest  by  the  priest, 
To  cram  now  the  guests  had  begun ; 
Tooth  and  nail,  like  a  wolf,  fell  the  bride  on  the  feast 
Nor  yet  had  the  clash  of  her  knife  and  fork  ceased. 
When  a  bell  (t'was  the  dustman's)  toll'd  one. 

"Then  first,  with  amazement,  brown  Sally  Green  found. 
That  a  stranger  was  stuck  by  her  side. 
His  cravat  and  his  ruffles  with  snuff  were  embrown'd; 
He  ate  not — he  drank  not — but,  turning  him  round. 
Sent  some  pudding  away  to  be  fried. 

"His  wig  was  turned  forwards,  and  wort  was  his  height. 
His  aoron  was  dirty  to  view; 
The  women  (oh!  wondrous)  were  hushed  at  the  sight, 
The  cats  as  they  eyed  him  drew  back  (well  they  might). 
For  his  body  was  pea-green  and  blue. 

"Now,  as  all  wish'd  to  speak,  but  none  knew  what  to  say, 
They  look'd  mighty  foolish  and  queer : 
At  length  spoke  the  lady  with  trembling — T  pray. 
Dear  sir,  that  your  peruke  aside  you  would  lay. 
And  partake  of  some  strong  or  small  beer.' 


A   BODK   -UJOUT  DOCTORS.  413 

"The  bride  shuts  her  fly-trap— the  stranger  complies. 

And  his  wig  from  his  phiz  deigns  to  pull. 
Adzooks !  what  a  squall  Sally  gave  through  surprise ! 
Like  a  pig  that  was  stuck,  how  she  opened  her  eyes, 

When  she  recognized  Giles's  bare  skull. 

"Each  miss  then  exclaimed,  while  she  turn'd  up  her  snout, 

'Sir,  your  head  isn't  fit  to  be  seen !' — 
The  pot-boys  ran  in,  and  the  pot-boys  ran  out, 
And  couldn't  conceive  what  the  noise  was  about. 

While  the  doctor  addressed  Sally  Green. 

"'Behold  me,  thou  jilt-flirt!    behold  me!'  he  cri'd — 

'I'm  Bolus,  whom  some  call  the  'knave  I' 
God  grant,  that  to  punish  your  falsehood  and  pride, 
You  should  feel  at  this  moment  a  pain  in  your  side. 
Quick,  swallow  this  rhubarb  ! — I'll  physic  the  bride, 

And  send  her  well-dosed  to  the  grave !' 

"Thus  saying,  the  physic  her  throat  he  forced  down, 

In  spite  of  whate'er  she  could  say : 
Then  bore  to  his  cnariot  the  maiden  so  brown, 
Nor  ever  again  was  she  seen  in  that  town, 

Or  the  doctor  who  whisked  her  away. 

"Not  long  lived  the  brewer,  and  none  since  that  time 
To  inhabit  the  brew-house  presume; 
For  old  women  say  that  by  order  sublime 
There  Sally  Oreen  suffers  the  pain  of  her  crime. 
And  bawls  to  get  out  of  the  room. 

"At  midnight  four  times  in  each  year  does  her  sprite 

With  shrieks  make  the  chamber  resound. 
1  won't  take  the  rhubarb !'  she  squalls  in  affright. 
While  a  cup  in  his  left  hand,  a  draught  in  his  right, 

Giles  Bolus  pursues  her  around. 

"With  wigs  so  well  powdered,  twelve  doctors  so  grave, 

Dancing  hornpipes  around  them  are  seen ; 
They  drink  chicken-broth,  and  this  horrible  stave. 
Is  twanged  through  each  nose,  'To  Giles  Bolus  the  knave. 

And  his  patient  the  sick  Sally  Green.'  " 

In  the  court  of  love,  Dr.  Van  Buchell,  the  empiric, 
may  pass  muster  as  a  physician.  ^VTien  that  droll 
charlatan  lost  his  first  wife,  in  1775,  he  paid  her  the 
compliment  of  preserving  her  body  with  great  care. 
Dr.  Hunter,  with  the  assistance  of  Mr.  Cruikshank,  in- 


414  A    BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

jected  the  blood-vessels  of  the  corpse  with  a  car- 
mine fluid,  so  that  the  cheeks  and  lips  had  the  hue 
of  healthy  life ;  the  cavities  of  the  boily  were  artistic- 
ally packed  with  the  antiseptics  used  by  modern  em- 
balmers;  and  glass  eyes  were  substituted  in  place  of 
the  filmy  balls  which  Death  had  made  his  own. 
Decked  in  a  dainty  apparel  of  lace  and  finest  linen, 
the  body  was  then  placed  in  a  bed  of  thin  paste  of 
plaster  of  Paris,  which,  crystallizing,  made  a  most  or- 
namental couch.  The  case  containing  this  fantastic 
horror  had  a  glass  lid,  covered  with  a  curtain;  and 
as  Van  Buehell  kept  it  in  his  ordinary  sitting-room, 
he  had  the  pleasure  of  introducing  his  visitors  to  the 
lifeless  form  of  his  "dear  departed."  For  several 
years  the  doctor  lived  very  happily  with  this  slough 
of  an  immortal  soul— never  quarrelling  with  it,  never 
being  scolded  by  it— on  the  whole,  enjoying  an 
amount  of  domestic  tranquility  that  rarely  falls  to 
one  man's  lot.  Unwisely  he  made  in  advanced  years 
a  new  alliance,  and  manifested  a  desire  to  be  on  with 
the  new  and  the  old  love  at  the  same  time.  To  this 
Mrs.  Van  Buehell  (No.  2)  strongly  objected,  and  in- 
sisted that  the  quaint  coffin  of  ^Mrs.  Van  Buehell  (No. 
1)  should  be  removed  from  the  parlour  in  which  she 
was  expected  to  spend  the  greatest  part  of  her  days. 
The  eccentric  mode  in  which  Buehell  displayed  his 
affection  for  his  first  wife  was  scarcely  less  repulsive 
than  the  devotion  to  the  interests  of  anatomical  sci- 
ence which  induced  Rondeletius  to  dissect  the  dead 
body  of  his  own  child  in  his  theatre  at  Montpel- 
ier. 

Are  there  no  more  loves  to  be  mentioned  ?    Yes ;  let 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  415 

these  concluding  pages  tell  an  interesting  story  of  the 
last  generation. 

Fifty  years  ago  the  picturesque,  sunny  town  of 
Holmnook  had  for  its  physician  one  Dr.  Kemp,  a 
grave  and  reverend  ^sculapius,  punctilious  in  eti- 
quette, with  an  imposing  formality  of  manner,  accu- 
rate in  costume,  in  every  respect  a  courtier  of  the 
old  school.  Holmnook  is  an  antique  market-town, 
square  and  compact,  a  capital  in  miniature,  lying  at 
the  foot  of  an  old  feudal  castle,  in  which  the  Bigods 
once  held  sway.  That  stronghold  of  moated  towers 
was  three  centuries  since  the  abode  of  a  mighty  Duke; 
Surrey,  the  poet  earl,  luckless  and  inspired,  was  born 
within  its  walls.  The  noble  acres  of  the  princely 
house  fell  into  the  hands  of  a  parvenu— a  rich,  grasp- 
ing la^v3'■er;  — that  was  bad.  The  lawyer  died  and 
went  to  his  place,  lea\ing  the  land  to  the  poor;— that 
"was  better.  And  now  the  produce  of  the  rich  soil, 
which  whilom  sent  forth  a  crop  of  mailed  knights, 
supports  a  college  of  toil  and  time-worn  peasants, 
saving  their  cold  thin  blood  from  the  penury  of  the 
poor-house,  and  sheltering  them  from  the  contumelies 
of— Guardians  of  the  Poor.  Hard  by  the  college, 
housing  these  ancient  humble  children  of  man,  is  a 
school,  based  on  the  same  beneficent  foundation, 
where  the  village  lads  are  taught  by  as  ripe  a  scholar 
and  true  a  gentleman  as  ever  came  from  the  banks  of 
Isis;  and  round  which  temple  of  learning  they  play 
their  rough,  noisy  games,  under  the  observation  of 
the  veterans  of  the  bourg— the  almsmen  and  alms- 
women  who  sit  in  the  sun  and  on  benches  before  their 
college,  clad  in  the  blue  coats  of  the  charity,  and 
feeling  no  shame  in  them,  though  the  armorial  badge 


416  A    BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

of  that  old  lawyer  is  tacked  upon  them  in  red  cloth. 

Holmnook  is  unlike  most  other  English  towns  of  its 
size,  abounding  as  it  does  in  large  antique  mansions, 
formerly  inhabited  by  the  great  officers  and  depend- 
ents on  the  ducal  household,  who  in  many  cases  were 
blood  relations  of  the  duke  himself.  Under  the  ca- 
pacious windows  of  these  old  houses,  in  the  streets, 
and  round  the  market-square,  run  rows  of  limes, 
spreading  their  cool  shade  over  the  pinnacles  of  ga- 
bled roofs,  and  flinging  back  bars  across  the  shining 
shingle  which  decorates  the  plaster  walls  of  the  older 
houses.  In  the  centre  of  the  town  stands  an  enor- 
mous church,  large  enough  to  hold  an  entire  army 
of  Christians,  and  containing  many  imposing  tombs 
of  earls  and  leaders,  long  since  gone  to  their  ac- 
count. 

Think  of  this  old  town,  its  venerable  dwellings- 
each  by  itself  suggesting  a  romance.  Hear  the  cooing 
and  lazy  flapping  of  pigeons,  making  continual  holi- 
day round  the  massive  chimneys.  Observe,  without 
seeming  to  observe,  the  mayor's  pretty  daughter  sit- 
ting at  the  open  oriel  window  of  the  Guild-hall,  mer- 
rily singing  over  her  needle-work,  and  wondering  if 
her  bright  ribbon  has  a  good  effect  on  passers  below. 
Heed  the  jingle  of  a  harpsichord  in  the  rector's  par- 
lour. Be  pleased  to  remember  that  the  year  is  1790 
—not  1860.  Take  a  glass  of  stinging  ale  at  "The 
Knight  of  Armour"  hostelry— and  own  you  enjoy  it. 
Take  another,  creaming  good-naturedly  up  under 
your  lip,  and  confess  you  like  it  better  than  its  prede- 
cessor. See  the  High  Sheriff's  carriage  pass  through 
the  excited  town,  drawn  by  four  enormous  black 
horses,  and  having  three  Bacchic  footmen  hanging  on 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  417 

behind.  Do  all  this,  and  then  you'll  have  a  faint  no- 
tion of  Holmnook,  its  un-English  picturesqueness,  its 
placid  joy,  and  experience  of  pomp. 

Who  is  the  gentleman  emerging  from  the  mansion 
on  the  causeway,  in  this  year  1790— with  white  pe- 
ruke and  long  pig-tail,  snuff-coloured  coat  and  velvet 
collar,  tight  dark  nether  garments,  silk  stockings,  and 
shoes  with  buckles,  volumes  of  white  shirt-frill  rising 
up  under  his  chin?  As  he  taps  his  shoes  on  his  door- 
step you  can  see  he  is  proud  of  his  leg,  a  pleasant 
pride,  whether  one  has  reason  for  it  or  not ! 

Seventy  years  of  age,  staid,  decorous,  and  thor- 
oughly versed  in  the  social  proprieties  of  the  old 
world,  now  gone  clean  from  us,  like  chivalry  or  chart- 
ism. Dr.  Kemp  was  an  important  personage  in  Holm- 
nook  and  its  vicinity.  An  eclat  was  his  that  a  coun- 
try doctor  does  not  usually  possess.  For  he  was  of 
gentle  blood,  being  a  cadet  of  an  old  and  wealthy  fam- 
ily on  the  other  side  of  the  country,  the  representa- 
tive of  which  hailed  him  "cousin,"  and  treated 
him  with  the  intimacy  of  kinship— the  kinship  of 
1790. 

Michael  Kemp's  youth  had  been  spent  away  from 
Holmnook.  Doubtless  so  polite  and  dignified  a  gen- 
tleman had  once  aimed  at  a  brighter  lot  than  a  rural 
physician's.  Doubtless  he  had  a  history,  but  he  kept 
it  to  himself.  He  had  never  married!  The  rumour 
went  that  he  had  been  disappointed— had  under- 
taken the  conquest  of  a  high-born  lady,  who  gave  an- 
other ending  to  the  game;  and  having  conquered 
him,  went  off  to  conquer  others.  Ladies  could  do 
such  things  in  the  last  century— when  men  had  hearts. 

Anyhow,  Michael  Kemp,  M.D.,  was  an  old  baeh- 

4—27 


418  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTOBS. 

elor,  of  spotless  honour,  and  a  reputation  that  scan- 
dal never  dared  to  trifle  with. 

A  lady,  much  respected  by  the  simple  inhabitants 
of  Holmsnook,  kept  his  house. 

Let  us  speak  of  her— fair  and  forty,  comely,  with 
matronly  outlines,  but  graceful.  Pleasant  of  voice, 
cheerful  in  manner,  active  in  benevolence.  Mistress 
Alice  was  a  great  favourite;  no  christening  or  wed- 
ding could  go  off  without  her  for  miles  around.  The 
doctor's  grandest  patients  treated  her  as  an  equal; 
for  apart  from  her  personal  claims  to  respect  and 
good-will,  she  was,  it  was  understood,  of  the  doctor 's 
blood— a  poor  relation,  gentle  by  birth  as  she  was  by 
education.  Mistress  Alice  was  a  great  authority 
amongst  the  Holmnook  ladies,  on  all  matters  pertain- 
ing to  dress  and  tast€.  Her  own  ordinary  costume 
was  an  artistic  one.  A  large  white  kerchief,  made  so 
as  to  sit  like  a  jacket,  close  and  high  round  the 
throat,  concealed  her  fair  arms  and  shoulders,  and 
reached  down  to  the  waist  of  her  dress,  which,  in 
obedience  to  the  fashion  of  the  time,  ran  close  be- 
neath her  arms.  In  1790  a  lady's  waist  at  Holmnook 
occupied  just  about  the  same  place  where  the  drapery 
of  a  London  belle's  Mazeppa  harness  offers  its  first 
concealment  to  its  wearer's  charms.  But  it  was  on 
her  foot-gear  that  Mistress  Alice  devoted  especial 
care.  The  short  skirts  of  that  day  encouraged  a 
woman  to  set  her  feet  off  to  the  best  advantage.  Mis- 
tress Alice  wore  natty  high-heeled  shoes  and  clocked 
stockings— bright  crimson  stockings  with  yellow 
clocks. 

Do  you  know  what  clocked  stockings  were,  ladies? 
This  writer  is  not  deeply  learned  on  such  matters, 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  419 

but  having  seen  a  pair  of  Mistress  Alice's  stockings, 
he  can  tell  you  that  they  had  on  either  side,  extend- 
ing from  the  heel  upwards  some  six  inches,  flowers 
gracefully  embroidered  with  a  light  yellow  silk  on  the 
crimson  ground.  And  these  wreaths  of  broidery  were 
by  our  ancestors  called  clocks.  This  writer  could  tell 
something  else  about  Mistress  Alice's  apparel.  She 
had  for  grand  evenings  of  high  festivity  white  kid 
gloves  reaching  up  to  the  elbow,  and  having  a  slit  at 
the  tips  of  the  forefinger  and  thumb  of  each  hand. 
It  was  an  ordinary  fashion  long  syne.  So,  ladies 
could  let  out  the  tips  of  those  digits  to  take  a  pinch 
of  snuff! 

One  night  Michael  Kemp,  M.D.,  Oxon.,  was  called 
up  to  come  with  every  possible  haste  to  visit  a  sick 
lady,  urgently  in  want  of  him.  The  night-bell  was 
rung  Aaolently,  and  the  messenger  cried  to  the  doctor 
over  and  over  from  the  pavement  below  to  make  good 
speed.  The  doctor  did  his  best  to  comply;  but,  as 
ill-luck  would  have  it,  after  he  had  struck  a  light  the 
candle  illumined  by  it  fell  down,  and  left  the  doctor 
in  darkness.  This  was  very  annojnng  to  the  good 
man,  for  he  could  not  reconcile  it  to  his  conscience 
to  consume  time  in  lighting  another,  and  yet  it  was 
hard  for  such  a  decorous  man  to  make  his  hasty  toilet 
in  the  dark. 

He  managed,  however,  better  than  he  expected. 
His  peruke  came  to  hand  all  right;  so  did  the  tight 
inexpressibles;  so  did  the  snuff-coloured  coat  with 
high  velvet  collar ;  so  did  the  buckled  shoes.    Bravo ! 

In  another  five  minutes  the  active  physician  had 
groped  his  way  down-stairs,  emerged  from  his  stately 
dwelling,  and  had  run  to  his  patient's  house. 


420  A    BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

In  a  trice  he  was  admitted;  in  a  twinkle  he  was 
up  the  stairs;  in  another  second  he  was  by  the  sick 
lady's  bedside,  round  which  were  seated  a  nurse  and 
three  eminent  Holmnook  gossips. 

He  was,  however,  little  prepared  for  the  recep- 
tion he  met  with— the  effect  his  appearance  pro- 
duced. 

The  sick  lady,  struggling  though  she  was  vath  se- 
vere pain,  laughed  outright. 

The  nurse  said,  "Oh  my !— Doctor  Kemp  !" 

Gossip  No.  1  exclaimed,  "Oh,  you'll  kill  me!" 

Gossip  No.  2  cried, ' '  I  can 't  believe  my  eyes ! ' ' 

Gossip  No.  3  exploded  with— "Oh,  Doctor  Kemp, 
do  look  at  your  stockings ! ' ' 

And  the  doctor,  obeying,  did  look  at  his  stockings. 
One  was  of  black  silk— the  other  was  a  crimson  one, 
with  yellow  clocks. 

Was  there  not  merry  talk  the  next  day  at  Holm- 
nook!  Didn't  one  hear  blithe  hearty  laughter  at  eve- 
ry street  corner — at  every  window  under  the  limes? 

What  did  they  laugh  about?    What  did  they  sayT 

Only  this,  fair  reader— 

"Honi  soil  qui  mal  y  pense." 

God  bless  thee,  Holmnook!  The  bells  of  thy  old 
church-tower  are  jangling  in  my  ears  though  thou  art 
a  hundred  miles  away.  I  see  the  blue  heavens  kissing 
thy  limes  1 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 


LITEBATUEE   AND  ABT. 


The  old  proverb  says,  "Every  man  is  a  physician  or 
a  fool  by  forty."  Sir  Henry  Halford  happening  to 
quote  the  old  saw  to  a  circle  of  friends,  Canning, 
with  a  pleasant  humour  smiling  in  his  eyes,  inquired, 
"Sir  Henry,  mayn't  he  be  both?" 

John  Locke,  according  to  academic  registration, 
was  not  a  physician  till  he  was  past  forty.  Bom  in 
1632,  he  took  his  M.B.  degree  Feb.  6th,  1674.  To 
what  extent  he  exercised  his  profession  is  still  a  mat- 
ter of  dispute ;  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  was  for 
some  period  an  active  practitioner  of  it.  Of  his  let- 
ters to  Hans  Sloane,  that  are  still  extant,  the  follow- 
ing is  one  :— 

"Deae  Sm,— 

' '  I  have  a  patient  here  sick  of  the  fever  at 
this  season.  It  seems  not  violent;  but  I  am  told  'tis 
a  sort  that  is  not  easily  thrown  off.  I  desire  to  know 
of  you  what  your  fevers  in  town  are,  and  what  meth- 
ods you  find  most  successful  in  them?  I  shall  be 
obliged  by  your  favour  if  you  will  give  me  a  word  or 


422  A    BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

two  by  to-morrow's  post,  and  direct  it  to  me,  to  be 
left  at  Mr  Harrison's,  in  the  'Crown,'  at  Harlow. 
"I  am.  Sir, 

"Your  most  humble  servant, 

"J  Locke." 

Popularly  the  name  of  Locke  is  as  little  associated 
with  the  profession  of  medicine  as  that  of  Sir  James 
^Mackintosh,  who  was  a  practising  physician,  till  am- 
bition and  poverty  made  him  select  a  more  lucrative 
vocation,  and  turn  his  energies  to  the  bar. 

Distinguished  amongst  literary  physicians  was  An- 
drew Borde,  who  studied  Medicine  at  Oxford  and 
]\Iontpelier,  and  it  is  said  acted  as  a  physician  in  the 
service  of  Henry  the  Eighth.  Borde 's  career  has  hith- 
erto been  a  puzzle  to  anti(iuaries  who,  though  inter- 
ested in  it,  have  been  able  to  discover  only  little  about 
it.  It  was  his  whim  to  sign  himself  Andrew  Perfora- 
tus  (his  name  really  signifying  "a  cottage,"— "bor- 
darius=a  cottager").  In  the  same  way  after  him 
Robert  Fludd,  the  Rosicrucian  doctor,  adopted  for 
his  signature  Robertus  de  Fluctibus.  In  his  works 
he  occasionally  gives  the  reader  a  glimpse  of  his 
personal  adventures;  and  from  contemporary  litera- 
ture, as  well  as  tradition,  we  lea  in  enough  to  feel  jus- 
tified in  believing  that  he  created  the  cant  term  "Mer- 
ry Andrew." 

Of  his  freaks,  about  the  most  absurd  was  his  con- 
duct when  acting  as  foreman  of  a  jury  in  a  small 
borough  town.  A  prisoner  was  charged  with  steal- 
ing a  pair  of  leather  breeches,  but  though  appear- 
ances were  strongly  against  the  accused  (who  was  a 
notorious  rogue),  the  evidence  was  so  defective  that 
to  return  a  verdict  of  guilty  on  the  charge  was  be^ 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  423 

yond  the  logic  and  conscience  of  the  twelve  good  men 
and  true.  No  course  seemed  open  to  them  but  to  ac- 
quit the  knave;  when  Andrew  Borde  prevailed  on 
them,  as  the  evidence  of  stealing  the  leather  breeches 
was  so  defective,  to  bring  him  in  guilty  of  man- 
slaughter. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  jurymen  took  An- 
drew's advice,  and  finding  a  verdict  to  the  best  of 
those  abilities  with  which  it  had  pleased  God  to  bless 
them,  astonished  the  judge  and  the  public,  not  less 
than  the  prisoner,  with  the  strange  conclusion  at 
which  they  had  arrived. 

Anthony  a  Wood  and  Hearne  tell  us  the  little  that 
has  hitherto  been  known  of  this  eccentric  physician. 
To  that  little  an  important  addition  may  be  made 
from  the  following  letter,  never  before  published,  the 
original  of  which  is  in  the  State-Paper  Office.  The 
epistle  is  penned  to  Henry  the  Eighth's  minister, 
Thomas  Cromwell. 

"Jesus. 

"Offering  humbly  salutacyon  with  dew  reverance. 
I  certyffy  yor  mastershepp  that  I  am  now  in  Skot- 
londe  in  a  lyttle  universite  or  study  namyd  Glasko, 
where  I  study  and  practyce  physyk  as  I  have  done 
in  dyverse  regyons  and  servj'ces  for  the  sustentacyon 
off  my  lyvyng,  assewring  you  that  in  ye  parts  that  I 
am  yn  ye  king's  grace  hath  many  hundred  and  in 
manner  all  men  of  presence  (except  some  skolastycall 
men)  that  be  hys  adversarys.  I  resortt  to  ye 
Skotysh  king's  howse  and  to  ye  erle  of  Aryn,  namyd 
Hamylton,  and  to  yo  Lord  Evyndale,  namyd  Stuerd, 
and  to  many  lords  and  lards  as  well  spyrytuall  as 
temporal,  and  truly  I  know  their  myuds,  for  they 


424  A    BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

takyth  me  for  a  Skotysh  man's  sone,  for  I  name  my 
selff  Karre,  and  so  ye  Karres  kallyth  me  cosyn, 
thorow  ye  which  I  am  in  the  more  favor.  Shortly  to 
conclude;  trust  you  no  Skott  for  they  wyll  yowse 
flatterying  wordes  and  all  j's  falshold.  I  suppose 
Teryly  that  you  have  in  Ynglond  by  hundred  and 
thowsand  Skotts  and  innumerable  other  alyons,  which 
doth  (specyally  ye  Skotts)  much  harme  to  the  king's 
leege  men  throw  their  evyll  wordes,  for  as  I  went 
thorow  Ynglond  I  mett  and  was  in  company  off  many 
rurall  felows,  Englishmen  that  love  nott  our  gracyose 
kyng.  Wold  to  Jesu  that  some  were  ponyshed  to 
geve  others  example.  "Wolde  to  Jesu  also  that  you 
had  never  an  alyen  in  yor  realme,  specyally  Skotts, 
for  I  never  knew  alyen  good  for  Ynglond  except  they 
knew  proffytt  and  lucre  should  eome  to  them  so.  In 
all  parts  of  Chrystyndome  that  I  have  travylled  in  I 
know  nott  V  Englishmen  inhabytants  except  only 
scholers  for  learning.  I  pray  to  Jesu  that  alyens  do 
in  Ynglond  no  more  harme  to  Ynglonde,  and  yff  I 
myght  do  Ynglonde  any  servyce,  specyally  to  my 
soveryn  lord  the  kjTig  and  to  you,  I  would  do  ytt  to 
spend  and  putt  my  lyfe  in  danger  and  jeberdy  as  far 
as  any  man.  God  be  my  judge.  You  have  my  hartt 
and  shall  be  sure  of  me  to  the  uttermost  of  my  pore 
power,  for  I  am  never  able  to  make  you  amends,  for 
when  I  was  in  greatt  thraldom,  both  bodyly  and 
goastly,  you  of  yor  gentylnes  sett  me  att  liberte. 
Also  I  thank  yor  mastershepp  for  yor  grett  kyndnes 
that  you  have  shewed  me  att  Bysshopps  Waltham, 
and  that  you  gave  me  lycense  to  come  to  you  ons  in 
a  qwarrtter.  as  sone  as  I  come  home  I  intende  to  come 
to  you  to  submytt  my  selff  to  you  to  do  with  me  what 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  D0CT0B8.  425 

you  wyll.  for  for  lak  of  wytt  paradventter  I  may 
in  this  wrettyng  say  that  shall  nott  content  you.  but 
god  be  my  judge  I  mene  trewly  both  to  my  sover- 
eyngne  lord  the  kyng  and  to  you.  when  I  was  kept 
in  thrawldom  in  ye  charterhouse  and  know  neither 
ye  kyngs  noble  acts  nor  you,  then  stultycyusly  throw 
synstrall  wordes  I  dyd  as  man  of  the  others  doth, 
butt  after  I  was  att  lyberte  manyfestly  I  aparsevyd  ye 
ignorance  and  blyndnes  that  they  and  I  wer  yn.  for 
I  could  never  know  no  thynge  of  no  maner  of  matter 
butt  only  by  them,  and  they  wolde  cawse  me  wrett 
full  incypyently  to  ye  prior  of  London  when  he  was 
in  ye  tower  before  he  was  putt  to  exicuyon.  for  ye 
which  I  trustt  yor  mastershepp  hath  pardonyd  me, 
for  god  knoweth  I  was  keppt  in  prison  straytly,  and 
glad  I  was  to  wrett  att  theyr  request,  but  I  wrott 
nothyng  that  I  thought  shold  be  agenst  my  prince 
nor  you  nor  no  other  man.  I  pray  god  that  you  may 
provyde  a  good  prior  for  that  place  of  London,  for 
truly  there  be  many  wylfuU  and  obstynatt  yowng 
men  that  stondeth  to  much  in  their  owne  consaytt 
and  vryll  nott  be  reformyd  butt  playth  ye  chyldryn, 
and  a  good  prior  wolde  so  serve  them  lyke  chyldryn. 
News  I  have  to  wrett  to  you  butt  I  yntende  to  be  with 
ou  shortly,  for  I  am  half  wery  off  this  baryn 
contry,  as  Jesu  Chrj'st  kno'wth,  who  ever  keppe  you 
in  helthe  and  honor,  a  myle  from  Edynborough,  the 
fyrst  day  off  Aprj'U,  by  the  hand  of  yor  poer  skoler 
and  servantt,— Andrew  Boorde  Freest." 

Literary  physicians  have,  as  a  rule,  not  prospered 
as  medical  practitioners.  The  public  harbour  towards 
them  the  same  suspicious  and  unfavourable  preju- 
dices as  they  do  to  literary  barristers.     A  man,  it  is 


426  A    BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTOKS. 

presumed,  cannot  be  a  master  of  two  trades  at  the 
same  time,  and  where  he  professes  to  carry  on  two  it 
is  usually  concluded  that  he  understands  neither. 
To  display  the  injustice  of  such  vie^vs  is  no  part  of 
this  writer's  work,  for  the  task  is  in  better  hands- 
time  and  experience,  who  are  yearly  adding  to  the 
cases  that  support  the  converse  proposition  that  if  a 
man  is  really  a  proficient  in  one  subject,  the  fact  is  of 
itself  a  reason  for  believing  him  a  master  of  a  second. 

Still,  the  number  of  brilliant  writers  who  have  en- 
rolled themselves  in  the  medical  fraternity  is  remark- 
able. If  they  derived  no  benefit  from  their  order, 
they  have  at  least  generously  conferred  lustre  upon 
it.  Goldsmith— though  no  one  can  say  on  what  his 
claim  to  the  title  of  doctor  rested,  and  though  in  his 
luckless  attempts  to  get  medical  employment  he  un- 
derwent even  more  humiliation  and  disgrace  than  fell 
to  his  lot  as  the  drudge  of  JIi-s.  GrifBths- is  one  of 
the  most  pleasant  associations  that  our  countrymen 
have  in  connection  with  the  history  of  "the  Faculty." 
Smollett,  like  Goldsmith,  tried  ineffectually  to  escape 
from  literary  drudgery  to  the  less  irksome  and  more 
profitable  duties  that  surround  the  pestle  and  mortar. 
Of  Garth,  Blackmore,  Arbuthnot,  and  Akenside, 
notice  has  already  been  taken. 

Anything  like  a  complete  enumeration  of  medical 
men  who  have  made  valuable  contributions  to  belles 
lettres  would  fill  a  volume,  by  the  writing  of  which 
very  little  good  would  be  attained.  By  no  means  the 
least  of  them  was  Armstrong,  whoso  portrait  Thom- 
son introduced  into  the  "Castle  of  Indolence." 

"With  him  was  sometimes  joined  in  silken  walk 
(Profoundly  silent — for  they  never  spoke). 


A   BOOK   .VBOUT  DOCTORS.  427 

One  shyer  still,  who  quite  detested  talk; 
If  stung  by  spleen,  at  once  away  he  broke 
To  grove  of  pine  and  broad  o'ershadowing  oak. 

There,  inly  thrilled,  he  wandered  all  alone, 
And  on  himself  his  pensive  fury  woke: 

He  never  uttered  word,  save  when  first  shone 

The  glittering  star  of  eve — 'Thank  Heaven,  the  day  is  done.' " 

His  medical  writings,  and  his  best  known  poem, 
"The  Art  of  Health, "  had  he  ^vritten  nothing  else, 
would  in  all  probability  have  brought  him  patients, 
but  the  licentiousness  of  "The  Economy  of  Love" 
effectually  precluded  him  from  ever  succeeding  as  a 
family  physician.  Amongst  Armstrong's  poet 
friends  was  Grainger,  the  amiable  and  scholarly  phy- 
sician who  enjoyed  the  esteem  of  Percy  and  Samuel 
Johnson,  Shenstone  and  Sir  Joshua.  Soon  after  the 
publication  of  his  translation  of  the  "Elegies  of 
Tibullus,"  (1758),  Grainger  went  to  the  island  of  St. 
Christopher's,  and  established  himself  there  as  a 
physician.  The  scenery  and  industrial  occupations 
of  the  island  inspired  him  to  write  his  most  important 
poem,  ""'The  Sugar-Cane,"  which,  in  escaping  such 
derision  as  was  poured  on  Blaekmore's  effusions, 
owed  its  good  fortune  to  the  personal  popularity  of 
the  author  rather  than  its  intrinsic  merits.  The  fol- 
lowing sample  is  a  fair  one  :— 

"Destructive  on  the  upland  groves 
The  monkey  nation  preys :  from  rocky  heights. 
In  silent  parties  they  descend  by  night. 
And  posting  watchful  sentinels,  to  warn 
When  hostile  steps  approach,  with  gambols  they 
Pcu!  o'er  the  cane-grove.     Luckless  he  to  whom 
That  land  pertains !  in  evil  hour,  perhaps, 
And  thoughtless  of  to-morrow,  on  a  die 
He  hazards  millions;  or,  perhaps,  reclines 
On  luxury's  soft  lap,  the  pest  of  wealth; 
And,  inconsiderate,  deems  his  Indian  crops 
Will  amply  her  insatiate  wants  supply. 


428  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

"From  these  insidious  droles  (peculiar  pest 
Of  Liamigia's  hills)  would'st  thou  defend 
Thy  waving  wealth,  in  traps  put  not  thy  trust, 
However  baited :  treble  every  watch. 
And  well  with  arms  provide  them ;  faithful  dogs, 
Of  nose  sapfacious,  on  their  footsteps  wait. 
With  these  attack  the  predatory  bands; 
Quickly,  th'  unequal  conflict  they  decline. 
And  chattering,  fling  their  ill-got  spoils  away. 
So  when,  of  late,  innumerous  Gallic  hosts. 
Fierce,  wanton,  cruel,  did  by  stealth  invade 
The  peaceable  American's  domains. 
While  desolation  mark'd  their  faithless  rout; 
No  sooner  Albion's  martial  sons  advanc'd, 
Than  the  gay  dastards  to  their  forests  fled. 
And  left  their  spoils  and  tomahawks  behind. 

"Nor  with  less  haste  the  whiskcr'd  vermin  race, 
A  countless  clan,  despoil  the  low-land  cane. 

"These  to  destroy,  &c." 

When  the  poem  was  read  in  MS.  at  Sir  Joshua's 
house,  the  lines  printed  in  italics  were  not  part  of  the 
production,  but  in  their  place  stood — 

"Now,  Muse,  let's  sing  of  rats." 
The  immediate  effect  of  such  bathos  was  a  burst  of 
inextinguishable  laughter  from  the  auditors,  whose 
sense  of  the  ridiculous  was  by  no  means  quieted  by 
the  fact  that  one  of  the  company,  slyly  overlooking 
the  reader,  discovered  that  "the  word  had  originally 
been  mice,  and  had  been  altered  to  rats,  as  more  dig- 
nified." 

Above  the  crowd  of  minor  medical  litterateurs  are 
conspicuous,  Moore,  the  author  of  "Zeluco";  Dr. 
Aikin,  one  of  whose  many  works  has  been  already  re- 
ferred to;  Erasmus  Darwin,  author  of  "The  Botanic 
Garden";  Jlason  Good,  the  translator  of  "Lucre- 
tius," and  author  of  the  "Study  of  Medicine";  Dr. 
Ferriar,  whose  "Illustrations  of  Sterne"  just  doubled 
the  value  in  the  market  of  "Burton's  Anatomy  of 
Melancholy";  Cogan,  the  author  of  "Life  and  Opin- 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTOES.  429 

ions  of  John  Buncle,  jun.";  Dr.  Harrington,  of  Bath, 
editor  of  the  "Nugae  Antiquae";  Millingen,  who 
wrote  "The  Curiosities  of  Medical  Practice,"  and 
"The  History  of  Duelling";  Dr.  Paris,  whose  "Life 
of  Sir  Humphrey  Davy,"  unsatisfactory  as  it  is  in 
many  places,  is  still  a  useful  book,  and  many  of  whose 
other  writings  will  long  remain  of  great  value ;  Wadd, 
the  humourous  collector  of  "Medical  Ana";  Dr.Merri- 
man,  the  late  contributor  to  the  Gentleman's  Maga- 
zine and  Notes  and  Queries;  and  Pettigrew,  the 
biographer  of  Lettsom.  If  the  physicians  and  sur- 
geons still  living,  who  have  openly  or  anonymously 
written  with  good  effect  on  subjects  not  immediately 
connected  with  their  profession,  were  placed  before 
the  reader,  there  would  be  found  amongst  them  many 
of  the  most  distinguished  of  their  fraternity. 

Apropos  of  the  Dr.  Harrington  mentioned  above,  a 
writer  says— "The  Doctor  for  many  years  attended 
the  Dowager  Lady  Trevor,  relict  of  Lord  Trevor,  £ind 
last  surviving  daughter  of  Sir  Richard  Steele.  He 
spoke  of  this  lady  as  possessing  all  the  wit,  humour, 
and  gaiety  of  her  father,  together  vrith  most  of  his 
faults.  She  was  extravagant,  and  always  in  debt; 
but  she  was  generous,  charitable,  and  humane.  She 
was  particularly  partial  to  young  people,  whom  she 
frequently  entertained  most  liberally,  and  delighted 
them  with  the  pleasantry  and  volubility  of  her  dis- 
course. Her  person  was  like  that  which  her  pleasant 
father  described  himself  in  the  Spectator,  with  his 
short  face,  &c.  A  little  before  her  death  (which  was 
in  the  month  of  December)  she  sent  for  her  doctor, 
and,  on  his  entering  her  chamber,  he  said,  'How  fares 
your  Ladyship?'     She  replied,  'Oh,  my  dear  Doctor, 


430  A   BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

ill  fare!  I  am  going  to  break  up  before  the  holi- 
days!' This  agreeable  lady  lived  many  years  in 
Queen's  Square,  Bath,  and,  in  the  summer  months,  at 
St.  Ann's  Hill,  Surrey,  the  late  residence  of  Rt.  Hon. 
Chas.  James  Fox. ' ' 

Wolcot,  better  known  as  Peter  Pindar,  was  a  med- 
ical practitioner,  his  father  and  many  of  his  ances- 
tors having  followed  the  same  calling  in  Devonshire 
and  Cornwall,  under  the  names  of  Woolcot,  Wolcott, 
Woolacot,  Walcot,  or  Wolcot.  After  acquiring  a 
knowledge  of  his  profession  in  a  somewhat  irregular 
manner  Wolcot  found  a  patron  in  Sir  William  Tre- 
lawny,  Bart.,  of  Trelawny,  co.  Cornwall,  who,  on  go- 
ing out  to  assume  the  governorship  of  Jamaica,  took 
the  young  surgeon  with  him  to  act  as  medical  officer 
to  his  household.  In  Jamaica  Wolcot  figured  in  more 
characters  tlian  one.  He  was  the  governor's  grand- 
master of  the  ceremonies,  private  secretary,  and  chap- 
lain. When  the  King  of  the  Mosquitoes  waited  on 
the  new  governor  to  express  his  loyal  devotion  to  the 
King  of  England's  representative,  Wolcot  had  to  en- 
tertain the  royal  guest— no  difficult  task  as  long  as 
strong  drink  was  in  the  way. 

His  Majesty— an  enormously  stout  black  brute- 
regarded  intoxication  as  the  condition  of  life  most 
fit  for  kings. 

"Champagne  the  courtier  drinks,  the  spleen  to  chase. 
The  colonel  Burgundy,  and  port  his  Grace." 

The  autocrat  of  the  Mosquitoes,  as  the  greatest  only 
are,  in  his  simplicity  sublime,  was  contented  with 
rum  or  its  equivalent. 

"Mo'  drink  for  king!  Mo'  drink  for  king!"  he 
would  bellow,  dancing  round  the  grand-master  of  the 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  431 

governor 's  household. 

"King,"  the  grand-master  would  reply,  "you  are 
drunk  already." 

"No,  no;  king  no  drunk.  Mo'  drink  for  king! 
Broder  George"  {i.  e.  George  III.)  "love  drink!" 

Grand-Master.— "BToder  George  does  not  love 
drink:  he  is  a  sober  man." 

Autocrat.— "But  King  of  Musquito  love  drink. 
Me  will  have  mo'  drink.  Me  love  drink  like  devil. 
Me  drink  whole  ocean!" 

The  different  meagre  memoirs  of  Peter  Pindar  are 
conflicting  as  to  whether  he  ever  received  ordination 
from  the  hands  of  the  Bishop  of  London.  It  seems 
most  probable  that  he  never  did.  But,  consecrated  or 
not,  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  officiated  as  a  colonial 
rector  for  some  time.  Droll  stories  of  him  as  a  parish 
priest  used  to  circulate  amongst  his  friends,  as  well 
as  amongst  his  enemies.  He  read  prayers  and 
preached  whenever  a  congregation  appeared  in  his 
church,  but  three  Sundays  out  of  every  four  not  a 
soul  came  to  receive  the  benefit  of  his  ministrations. 

The  rector  was  an  admirable  shot,  and  on  his  way 
from  his  house  to  church  used  to  amuse  himself  with 
shooting  pigeons,  his  clerk— also  an  excellent  shot- 
walking  behind  with  a  fowling-piece  in  his  hand, 
and  taking  part  in  the  sport.  Having  reached  the 
sacred  edifice,  his  reverence  and  attendant  opened 
the  church  door  and  waited  in  the  porch  ten  minutes 
for  the  advent  of  worshippers.  If  none  had  present- 
ed themselves  at  the  end  of  ten  minutes,  the  pastor 
beat  a  retreat.  If  only  a  few  black  Christians  strag- 
gled up,  the  rector  bought  them  off  with  a  few  coin.s 
and  then  went  home.     One  cunning  old  negro,  who 


432  A    BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTOES. 

saw  that  the  parson's  heart  was  more  with  the  wild- 
fowl of  the  neighboring  bay  than  bent  on  the  dis- 
charge of  his  priestly  functions,  after  a  while  pre- 
sented himself  every  Sunday,  when  the  following  in- 
terview and  arrangement  were  regularly  repeated:— 

"WTiat  do  you  come  here  for,  blaekee?"  the  par- 
son would  exclaim. 

"Why,  massa,  to  hear  your  good  sermon  and  all 
de  prayer  ob  de  church." 

"Would  not  a  bit  or  two  do  you  more  goodY" 

"Yes,  massa  doctor— me  lub  prayer  much,  but  me 
lub  money  too." 

The  "bit  or  two"  would  then  be  paid,  and  the  de- 
votee would  retire  speedily  from  the  scene.  For  an 
entire  twelve-month  was  this  black-mail  exacted. 

On  his  return  to  England,  AVolcot,  after  a  few  un- 
successful attempts  to  establish  himself  in  practice, 
relinquisbed  the  profession  of  physic  as  well  as  that 
of  divinity,  and,  settling  himself  in  London,  made 
both  fame  and  a  good  income  by  his  writings.  As  a 
political  satirist  he  was  in  his  day  almost  without  a 
rival,  and  the  popularity  of  his  numerous  works 
would  have  placed  a  prudent  man  in  lasting  aflBu- 
ence.  Improvidence,  however,  necessitated  him  to 
sell  the  copyright  of  his  works  to  Messrs.  Robinson, 
Golding,  and  Walker  for  an  annuity  of  £250,  pay- 
able half-yearly,  during  the  remainder  of  his  life. 
Loose  agreements  have  alwaj's  been  the  fashion  be- 
tween authors  and  publishers,  and  in  the  present  case 
it  was  not  clearly  stated  what  "copyright  of  his 
works"  meant.  The  publishers  interpreted  it  as  the 
copyright  of  both  what  the  author  had  written  at 
the  time  of  making  the  agreement,  and  also  of  what 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  433 

he  should  subsequently  write.  Wolcot,  however,  de- 
clared that  he  had  in  the  transaction  only  had  regard 
to  his  prior  productions.  After  some  litigation  and 
more  squabbling,  the  publishers  consented  to  take 
Wolcot 's  view  of  the  case;  but  he  never  forgave  them 
the  discomfort  they  had  caused  him.  His  rancour 
against  "the  trade"  increased  with  time,  and  in- 
spired some  of  his  most  violent  and  unjust  verses:— 

"Fired  with  the  love  of  rhyme,  and,  let  me  say. 
Or  virtue,  too,  I  sound  the  moral  lay; 
Much  like  St.  Paul  (who  solemnly  protests 
He  battled  hard  at  Ephesus  with  beasts), 
I've  fought  with  lions,  monkeys,  bulls,  and  bears. 
And  got  half  Noah's  ark  about  my  ears ; 
Nay,  more  (which  all  the  courts  of  justice  know), 
Fought  with  the  brutes  of  Paternoster  Row." 

For  medicine  Peter  Pindar  had  even  less  respect 
than  Garth  had.  He  used  to  say  "that  he  did  not 
like  the  practice  of  it  as  an  art.  He  was  entirely  ig- 
norant, indeed,  whether  the  patient  was  cured  by 
the  vis  medicatrix  natures,  or  the  administration  of  a 
little  pill,  which  was  either  directly  or  indirectly  to 
reach  the  part  affected."  And  for  the  practitioners 
of  the  art  held  in  such  low  esteem,  he  cherished  a 
contempt  that  he  would  at  times  display  with  true 
Pindaric  warmth.  In  his  two-act  farce,  "Physic 
and  Delusion;  or  Jezebel  and  the  Doctors,"  the  dia- 
logue is  carried  on  in  the  following  strain : — 

"Blister.—                            By  God,  old  prig! 
Another  word,  and  by  my  wig 

"Bolus. — Thv  wig?    Great  accoucheur,  well  said, 

'Tis  of  more  value  than  thy  head ; 

And  'mongst  thy  customers — poor  ninnies  ! 

Has  helped  thee  much  to  bag  thy  guineas." 

Amongst  Peter  Pindar's  good  services  to  the  world 

was  the  protection  he  afforded  to  Opie  (or  Oppy,  as 

4-28 


434  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

• 

it  was  at  one  time  less  euphoniously  spelt  and  pro- 
nounced) the  artist,  when  he  was  a  poor  country 
clown,  rising  at  three  o'clock  in  the  summer  morn- 
ings, to  pursue  his  art  ^^ath  rude  pieces  of  chalk  and 
charcoal.  Wolcot  presented  the  boy  with  his  first 
pencils,  colours,  and  canvas,  and  put  him  in  the 
way  to  paint  portraits  for  the  magnificent  remuner- 
ation of  half-a-guinea,  and  subsequently  a  guinea 
a-head.  And  it  was  to  the  same  judicious  friend  that 
Opie,  on  leaving  the  provinces,  owed  his  first  success 
in  London. 

Wolcot  used  to  tell  some  droll  stories  about  his 
artist  friend.  Opie's  indiscreet  manner  was  a  source 
of  continual  trouble  to  those  who  endeavoured  to 
serve  him;  for,  priding  himself  on  being  "a  rough 
diamond,"  he  took  every  pains  that  no  one  should 
fail  to  see  the  roughness.  A  lady  sitter  was  anxious 
that  her  portrait  should  be  "very  handsome,"  and 
frankly  told  the  painter  so.  ''Then,  madam,"  was 
the  reply,  "you  wish  to  be  painted  otherwise  than 
you  are.  I  see  you  do  not  want  your  own  face." 
iNot  less  impudent  was  he  at  the  close  of  his  first  year 
in  London,  in  taking  out  writs  against  several  sitters 
who  were  rather  tardy  in  their  payments. 

Opie  was  not  the  only  artist  of  celebrity  deeply  in- 
debted to  Peter  Pindar.  Bone,  the  painter  in  enamel, 
found  an  efficient  friend  in  the  same  discerning  lover 
of  the  arts.  In  this  respect  AVolcot  was  worthy  of 
the  profession  which  he  deserted,  and  affected  to  de- 
spise; and  his  name  will  ever  be  honourably  men- 
tioned amongst  those  physicians  who  have  fostered 
art,  from  the  days  of  picture-loving  Mead,  down  to 
those  of  the  writer's  very  kind  friend,  Dr.  Diamond, 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  435 

who  gathered  from  remote  quarters  "The  Diamond 
Collection  of  Portraits,"  which  may  be  seen  amongst 
the  art  treasures  of  Oxford. 

One  of  the  worthies  of  Di*.  Diamond's  family  was 
Robertus  Fludd,  or  De  Fluctibus,  the  writer  of  Ros- 
icrucian  celebrity  who  gave  Sterne  more  than  one 
lesson  in  the  arts  of  eccentricity.  Sir  Thomas  Fludd 
of  Milgate,  Bearsted,  co.  Kent  (grandson  of  David 
Fludd,  alias  Lloyd  of  Morton,  in  Shropshire),  had 
five  sons  and  a  daughter.  Of  this  offspring,  one  son, 
Thomas,  purchased  Gore  Court,  and  fixed  there  a 
family,  the  vicissitudes  of  which  may  be  learnt  by  a 
reference  to  Hasted 's  Kent.  From  this  branch  of 
the  Fludds  descended  Dr.  Diamond,  who,  amongst 
other  curious  family  relics,  possesses  the  diploma  of 
Robertus  de  Fluctibus. 

When  Robertus  de  Fluctibus  died,  Sept.  8,  1637, 
in  Coleman  St.,  London,  his  body,  under  the  protec- 
tion of  a  herald  of  arms,  was  conveyed  to  the  family 
seat  in  Kent,  and  was  then  buried  in  Bearsted 
Church,  under  a  stone  which  he  had  before  laid  for 
himself.  The  monument  over  his  ashes  was  ordered 
by  him  in  his  last  will  to  be  made  after  that  of  Wil- 
liam Camden  in  the  Abbey  at  Westminster.  The  in- 
scription which  marks  his  resting-place  declares  his, 
rather  than  our,  estimate  of  his  intellectual  greats 
ness; 

Magnificus  non  hxc  sub  odoribus  urna  vaporat, 

Crypta  tegit  cineres  nee  speciosa  tuos. 

Quod  mortale  minus,  tibi  te  committimus  unum; 

Ingenii  vivent  hie  monumenta  tui 

Nam  tibi  qui  similis  scribit,   moriturque,  sepulchrum 

Pro  tota  aeternum  posteritate  facit. 

More  modest,  and  at  the  same  time  more  humorous. 


436  A    BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

is  the  epitaph,  in  Ilendon  Church,  of  poor  Thomas 
Crossfield,  whose  name,  alike  as  surgeon  and  politi- 
cian, has  passed  from  among  men  :— 

"Underneath  Tom   Crossfield  lies, 
Who  cares  not  now  who  laughs  or  cries. 
He  always  laughed,  and  when  mellow 
Was  a  harum  scarum  sort  of  fellow. 
To  none  gave  designed  offence, 
So — Honi  soil  qui  mat  y  pensc." 

Amongst  the  medical  poets  there  is  one  whom  all 
scholarly  physicians  jealously  claim  as  of  their  body 
—John  Keats;  he  who,  dying  at  Rome,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-si.x,  wished  his  epitaph  to  be,  "Here  lies  one 
whose  name  was  writ  in  water."  After  serving  his 
apprenticeship  under  an  Edmonton  surgeon,  the 
author  of  "Endyinion"  became  a  medical  student  at 
St.  Thomas's  hospital. 

Mention  here,  too,  may  be  made  of  Dr.  Macnish,  the 
author  of  "The  Anatomy  of  Drunkenness,"  and 
"The  JModern  Pythagorean";  and  of  Dr.  Moir,  the 
poet,  whose  death,  a  few  years  since,  robbed  the 
world  of  a  simple  and  pathetic  writer,  and  his  per- 
sonal acquaintance  of  a  noble-hearted  friend. 

But  of  all  modern  English  poets  who  have  had  an 
intimate  personal  connection  with  the  medical  pro- 
fession, the  greatest  by  far  is  Crabbe— 

"Nature's  sternest  painter,  yet  the  best." 
In  1754  George  Crabbe  was  born  in  the  old  sea- 
faring town  of  Aldborough,  in  the  county  of  Suffolk. 
His  father,  the  collector  of  salt-duties,  or  salt-master 
of  the  town,  was  a  churlish  sullen  fellow  at  the  best 
of  times ;  but,  falling  upon  adversity  in  his  old  days, 
he  became  the  heau-ideal  of  a  domestic  tjTant.  He 
was  not,  however,   without    his    respectable  points. 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTOES.  437 

Though  a  poor  man,  he  did  his  best  to  educate  his 
children  above  the  ranks  of  the  very  poor.  One  of 
them  became  a  thriving  glazier  in  his  native  town; 
another  went  to  sea,  and  became  captain  of  a  Liver- 
pool slave-ship ;  and  a  third,  also  a  sailor,  met  with 
strange  vicissitudes— at  one  time  enjoying  a  very 
considerable  amount  of  prosperity,  and  then  suffering 
penury  and  persecution.  A  studious  and  a  delicate 
lad,  George,  the  eldest  of  the  party,  was  designed 
for  some  pursuit  more  adapted  to  his  disposition  and 
physical  powers  than  the  avocations  of  working  me- 
chanics, or  the  hard  duties  of  the  marine  service. 
"When  quite  a  child,  he  had,  amongst  the  inhabitants 
of  Aldborough,  a  reputation  for  mental  superiority 
that  often  did  him  good  service.  On  one  occasion  he 
chanced  to  offend  a  playmate— his  senior  and  "mas- 
ter," as  boys  and  savages  term  it— and  was  on  the 
point  of  receiving  a  good  thrashing  nigh  the  roaring 
waves  of  old  ocean,  when  a  third  boy,  a  common  ac- 
quaintance, exclaimed  in  a  voice  of  affright:— 

"Tar  marn't  middle  a'  him;  lit  him  aloone— he  ha' 
got  I'arning." 

The  plea  was  admitted  as  a  good  one,  and  the  fu- 
ture bard,  taking  his  benefit  of  clergy,  escaped  the 
profanation  of  a  drubbing. 

George  was  sent  to  two  respectable  schools,  the  onfe 
at  Bungay,  in  Suffolk,  and  the  other  (the  better  of 
the  two)  at  Stowmarket,  in  the  same  county.  The 
expense  of  such  an  education,  even  if  it  amounted 
to  no  more  than  £20  per  annum,  was  no  small  under- 
taking for  the  salt-master  of  a  fishing-village;  for 
Aldborough— now  a  handsome  and  much  frequented 
provincial  watering-place— was  in  1750  nothing  bet- 


438  A    BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

ter  than  a  collection  of  huts,  whose  humble  inhabi- 
tants possessed  little  stake  in  the  commonweal  beyond 
the  right  of  sendiflg  to  parliament  two  members  to 
represent  their  interests  and  opinions.  On  leaving 
school,  in  his  fourteenth  year,  George  was  appren- 
ticed to  a  country  doctor  of  a  very  rough  sort,  who 
plied  his  trade  at  Wickham  Brook,  a  small  village 
near  Bury  St.  Edmunds.  It  is  a  fact  worthy  of  note, 
as  throwing  some  light  on  the  state  of  the  profession 
in  the  provinces,  that  the  apprentice  shared  the  bed 
of  his  master's  stable-boy.  At  AVickham  Brook,  how- 
ever, the  lad  did  not  remain  long  to  endure  such  in- 
dignity. He  was  removed  from  that  scene  of  trial, 
and  placed  under  the  tutelage  of  Mr.  Page,  a  surgeon 
of  Woodbridge,  a  gentleman  of  good  connections  and 
polite  tastes,  and  through  the  marriage  of  his  daugh- 
ter with  the  late  famous  ^Vlderman  Wood,  an  ances- 
tor of  a  learned  judge,  who  is  not  more  eminent  as 
a  lawyer  than  beloved  as  a  man. 

It  was  during  his  apprenticeship  to  Mr.  Page  of 
Woodbridge  that  Crabbe  made  his  first  important 
efforts  in  poetry,  publishing,  in  the  year  1772,  some 
fugitive  pieces  in  Whehle's  Magazine,  and  in  1775 
"Inebriety,  a  poem,  in  three  parts.  Ipswich:  printed 
and  sold  by  C.  Punchard,  bookseller,  in  the  Butter- 
market."  While  at  Woodbridge,  too,  his  friend  Lev- 
ett,  a  young  surgeon  of  the  neighborhood,  took  him 
over  to  Framlingham,  introducing  him  to  the  fam- 
ilies of  that  picturesque  old  town.  William  Springall 
Levett  was  at  that  time  engaged  to  Alethea  Brereton, 
a  lady  who,  under  the  7iom  de  plume  of  "Eugenia 
Acton,"  wrote  certain  novels  that  created  a  sensation 
in  their  brief  day.    Amongst  them  were  ' '  Vicissitudes 


A  BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTOES.  439 

of  Genteel  Life,"  "The  Microcosm,"  and  "A  Tale 
without  a  Title. ' '  The  love-making  of  Mr.  Levett  and 
Miss  Eugenia  de  Acton  was  put  a  stop  to  by  the 
death  of  the  former,  in  1774.  The  f ollo^ving  epitaph, 
transcribed  from  the  History  of  Framlingham,  the 
work  of  the  able  antiquarian,  Mr.  Richard  Green,  is 
interesting  as  one  of  Crabbe's  earlier  compositions. 

"What !  though  no  trophies  peer  above  his  dust, 
Nor  sculptured  conquests  deck  his  sober  bust; 
What !  tfiough  no  earthly  thunders  sound  his  name. 
Death  eives  him  conquest,  and  our  sorrows  fame ! 
One  sigh  reflection  heaves,  but  shuns  e.xcess, 
More  should  we  mourn  him,  did  we  love  him  less." 

Subsequently  Miss  Brereton  married  a  gentleman 
named  Le^\^s,  engaged  in  extensive  agricultural  oper- 
ations. However  brief  her  literary  reputation  may 
have  been,  her  pen  did  her  good  service;  for,  at  a 
critical  period  of  her  husband's  career,  it  brought 
her  sums  of  much-needed  money. 

Mr.  Levett 's  romance  closed  prematurely  together 
with  his  life,  but  through  him  Crabbe  first  became 
acquainted  %\dth  the  lovely  girl  whom  he  loved 
through  years  of  trial,  and  eventually  made  his  wife. 
Sarah  Elmy  was  the  niece  of  John  Tovell,  yeoman, 
not  gentleman— YiQ  would  have  scorned  the  title.  Not 
that  the  worthy  man  was  wTithout  pride  of  divers 
kinds,  or  that  he  did  not  hold  himself  to  be  a  gentle- 
man. He  believed  in  the  Tovells  as  being  one  of  the 
most  distinguished  families  of  the  country.  A  Tov- 
ell, by  mere  right  of  being  a  Tovell,  could  thrash 
more  Frenchmen  than  any  Englishman,  not  a  Tovell, 
could.  WTien  the  good  man  said,  "I  am  nothing 
more  than  a  plain  yeoman, ' '  he  never  intended  or  ex- 
pected any  one  to  believe  him,  or  to  regard  his  words 


440  A    BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

in  any  other  light  than  as  a  playful  protest  against 
being  deemed  "a  plain  yeoman,"  or  that  modem  hy- 
brid, ' '  a  gentleman  farmer.  ' ' 

He  was  a  well-made,  handsome,  pleasant  fellow- 
riding  a  good  horse  with  the  hounds— loving  good 
cheer— enjoying  laughter,  without  being  very  par- 
ticular as  to  the  cause  of  it— a  little  too  much  ad- 
dicted to  carousing,  but  withal  an  agreeable  and  use- 
ful citizen ;  and  he  lived  at  Parham  Lodge,  a  house 
that  a  peer  inhabited  after  him,  without  making  any 
important  alterations  in  the  place. 

On  Crabbe's  first  introduction  to  Parham  Lodge 
he  was  received  with  cordiality;  but  when  it  was  seen 
that  he  had  fallen  in  love  with  the  squire's  niece,  it 
was  only  natural  that  "his  presumption"  should  not 
at  first  meet  the  approval  either  of  Mrs.  Tovell  or  her 
husband.  But  the  young  people  plighted  troth  to 
each  other,  and  the  engagement  was  recognized  by 
the  lady's  family.  It  was  years,  however,  before  the 
wedding  bells  were  set  ringing.  Crabbe's  appren- 
ticeship to  Mr.  Page  finished,  he  tried  ineffectually  to 
raise  the  funds  for  a  regular  course  of  hospital  in- 
struction in  London.  Returning  to  Aldborough,  he 
furnished  a  shop  with  a  few  bottles  and  a  pound's 
worth  of  drugs,  and  set  up  as  "an  apothecary."  Of 
course  it  was  only  amongst  the  poor  of  his  native 
town  that  he  obtained  patients,  the  wealthier  inhab- 
itants of  the  borough  distrusting  the  knowledge  of  a 
doctor  who  had  not  walked  the  hospitals.  In  the 
summer  of  1778,  however,  he  was  appointed  surgeon 
to  the  Warwickshire  militia,  then  stationed  at  Ald- 
borough, and  in  the  following  winter,  on  the  War- 
wickshire militia  being  moved  and  replaced  by  the 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  441 

Norfolk  militia,  he  was  appointed  surgeon  to  the  lat- 
ter regiment  also.  But  these  posts  were  only  tem- 
porary, and  conferred  but  little  emolument  on  their 
holder.  At  length  poverty  drove  the  poet  from  his 
native  town.  The  rest  of  his  career  is  matter  of  no- 
toriety. Every  reader  knows  how  the  young  man 
went  to  London  and  only  escaped  the  death  of  Otway 
or  Chatterton  by  the  generous  patronage  of  Burke, 
how  through  Burke's  assistance  he  was  ordained,  be- 
came the  Duke  of  Rutland's  chaplain,  obtained  com- 
fortable church  preferment,  and  for  a  long  span  en- 
joyed an  amount  of  domestic  happiness  that  was  as 
great  and  richly  deserved  as  his  literary  reputation. 
Crabbe's  marriage  with  Sarah  Elmy  eventually 
conferred  on  him  and  his  children  the  possession  of 
Parham  Lodge,  which  estate,  a  few  years  since,  passed 
from  them  into  the  hands  of  wealthy  purchasers. 
The  poet  also  succeeded  to  other  wealth  through  the 
same  connection,  an  old-maid  sister  of  John  Tovell 
leaving  him  a  considerable  sum  of  money.  "I  can 
screw  Crabbe  up  and  down  like  an  old  fiddle,"  this 
amiable  lady  was  fond  of  saying;  and  during  her 
life  she  proved  that  her  boast  was  no  empty  one. 
But  her  will  was  a  handsome  apology  for  all  her  lit- 
tle tiffs. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

NUMBER  ELEVEN— A  HOSPITAL  STOET. 

"Then,  sir,"  said  Mrs.  Mallet,  "if  you'll  only  not 
look  so  frightened,  I'll  tell  you  how  it  was.  It  is  now 
twenty  years  ago  that  I  was  very  unfortunate.  I 
was  not  more  than  thirty  years  of  age,  but  I  was  old 
enough  to  have  just  lost  a  good  husband  and  a  dear 
little  babe;  and  then,  when  I  hadn't  a  sixpence  in 
my  pocket,  I  caught  the  fever,  and  had  to  go  to  a 
hospital.  I  wasn't  used  to  trouble;  for  although  I 
was  nothing  better  than  a  poor  man's  child,  I  had 
known  all  my  life  nothing  but  kindness.  I  never 
had  but  one  mistress,— my  lady,  who  when  she  was 
the  most  beautiful  young  lady  in  all  Devonshire,  took 
me  out  of  a  village  school,  and  raised  me  to  be  her 
maid;  and  her  maid  I  was  for  twelve  years— first 
down  in  Devonshire,  and  afterwards  up  in  London, 
when  she  married  (somewhat  against  the  will  of  her 
family)  a  thorough  good  gentleman,  but  a  poor  one, 
who  after  a  time  took  her  out  to  India,  where  he  be- 
came a  judge,  and  she  a  grand  lady.  My  dear  mis- 
tress would  have  taken  me  out  to  India  with  her,  only 
she  was  then  too  poor  to  pay  for  my  passage  out,  and 


•      A    BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  443 

bear  the  expense  of  me  there,  where  labour  can  be 
got  so  cheap,  and  native  servants  can  live  on  a  hand- 
ful of  rice  a  day.  She,  sir,  is  Lady  Burridge— the 
same  who  gave  me  the  money  to  start  in  this  house 
v/ith,  and  whose  carriage  you  saw  yesterday  at  my 
door. 

"So  my  mistress  went  eastward,  and  I  was  left 
behind  to  marry  a  young  man  I  had  loved  for  some 
few  years,  and  who  had  served  during  that  time  as 
clerk  to  my  lady's  husband.  I  was  a  young  woman, 
and  young  women,  to  the  end  of  the  chapter,  will 
think  it  a  brave  thing  to  fall  in  love.  I  thought  my 
sweetheart  was  a  handsomer  and  cleverer  man  than 
any  other  of  his  station  in  all  London.  I  wonder 
how  many  girls  have  thought  the  same  of  their  fa- 
vourites !  I  went  to  church  one  morning  with  a  flut- 
tering heart  and  trembling  knees,  and  came  out  un- 
der the  porch  thinking  that  all  my  life  would  ever 
afterwards  be  brighter,  and  lighter,  and  sunnier  than 
it  had  been  before.  "Well !  in  dancing  into  that  pretty 
blunder,  I  wasn't  a  bigger  fool  than  lots  of  others. 

"And  if  a  good  husband  is  a  great  blessing  (and 
she  must  be  a  paltry  woman  who  can  say  nay  to  that), 
I  was  born  to  luck;  for  my  husband  was  kind,  good, 
and  true— his  temper  was  as  sweet  at  home  as  his 
manners  were  abroad— he  was  hard-working  and 
clever,  sober  and  devout;  and— though  you  may 
laugh  at  a  woman  of  my  age  talking  so  like  a  romance 
—I  tell  you,  sir,  that  if  my  life  had  to  come  all  over 
again,  I'd  rather  have  the  mischance  of  marrying 
my  dear  Richard,  that  the  good  fortune  of  wedding  a 
luckier  man. 
' '  There 's  no  doubt  the  game  turned  out  ill  for  me. 


444  A    BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

At  first  it  seemed  as  if  it  would  be  just  otherwise,  for 
my  husband  had  good  health,  plenty  of  work,  and 
sufficient  pay.  so  that,  when  my  little  girl  came,  her 
sweet  face  brought  no  shadow  of  anxiety  with  it,  and 
we  hoped  she  would  be  followed  in  due  course  by 
half-a-dozen  more.  But  ere  the  dear  babe  had  learned 
to  prattle,  a  drear  change  came  over  the  happy  pros- 
pect. The  fever  crept  over  the  gentle  darling,  and 
after  she  had  suffered  for  a  week  or  more,  lying  on 
my  arms,  God  raised  her  from  me  into  his  happy 
home,  where  the  beauty  of  summer  reigns  for  ever, 
and  the  coldness  of  winter  never  enters.  Richard 
and  I  took  the  body  of  our  babe  to  the  burial-ground, 
and  saw  it  covered  up  in  the  earth  which  by  turns 
gives  all  we  get,  and  takes  away  from  us  all  we  have ; 
and  as  we  walked  back  to  our  deserted  home,  arm- 
in-arm,  in  the  light  of  the  summer's  evening,  we 
talked  to  each  other  more  solemnly  and  tenderly  than 
we  had  done  for  many  a  day.  And  the  next  morning 
he  went  back  to  his  work  in  the  office,  from  which  he 
had  absented  himself  since  our  child's  death;  and  I 
encouraged  him  to  cheer  up,  and  not  to  give  way  to 
sorrow  when  I  was  not  nigh  to  comfort  him,  but  toil 
bravely  and  hopefully,  as  a  man  should ;  and  in  so 
advising  him,  I  do  not  blush  to  say  that  I  thought 
not  only  of  what  was  best  for  his  spirits,  but  also 
of  what  our  necessity  required — for  we  were  only 
poor  people,  not  at  any  time  beforehand  in  the  world, 
and  now  reduced  by  the  cost  of  our  little  one's  illness 
and  funeral ;  and,  sir,  in  this  hard  world  we  women, 
most  times,  have  the  best  of  it,  for  when  the  house 
is  full  of  sorrow,  we  have  little  else  to  do  but  weep, 
but  the  men  have  to  grieve  and  toil  too. 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  445 

"But  poor  Richard  could  not  hold  up  his  head. 
He  came  back  from  work  that  day  pale  and  faint, 
and  in  the  evening  he  had  a  chill  and  a  heat-fit,  that 
let  me  know  the  fever  which  had  killed  our  little  one 
had  passed  into  him.  The  next  day  he  could  not 
leave  his  bed,  and  the  doctor  (a  most  kind  man,  who 
was  always  making  rough  jokes  in  a  rough  voice- 
just  to  hide  his  womanliness)  said  to  me,  'If  your 
husband  goes  down  to  his  master's  chambers  in  the 
Temple  to-day,  he  had  better  stop  at  the  coffin-mak- 
er's, in  the  corner  of  Chancery  Lane,  and  leave  his 
measure. '  But  Richard 's  case  was  not  one  for  a  jest, 
and  he  rapidly  became  worse  than  the  doctor  fancied 
he  would  be  when  he  made  that  light  speech.  He 
was  ill  for  six  weeks,  and  then  began  slowly  to  mend ; 
he  got  on  so  far  as  to  sit  up  for  two  days  for  half- 
an-hour  while  he  had  his  tea,  and  we  were  hoping 
that  soon  he  would  be  able  to  be  moved  into  the  coun- 
try—to my  sister's,  whose  husband  was  an  engineer 
at  Stratford ;  but,  suddenly,  he  had  a  relapse,  and  on 
the  morning  that  finished  the  tenth  week  from  his 
being  seized,  his  arms  let  go  their  hold  on  my  neck — 
and  I  was  left  alone ! 

"All  during  my  babe's  and  Richard's  long  illness 
my  sister  Martha  had  behaved  like  a  true  sister  to 
me.  She  was  my  only  sist«r,  and,  to  the  best  of  my 
knowledge,  the  only  relation  I  had  in  the  world- and 
a  good  one  she  was;  from  girl  to  woman  her  heart 
always  rung  out  clear  like  a  bell.  She  had  three 
young  children,  but  even  fear  of  contagion  reaching 
them  could  not  keep  her  from  me  in  my  trouble.  She 
kept  making  the  journey  backwards  and  forwards, 
at  least    once  a  week,  in    the    carrier's    cart;  and, 


446  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

though  she  had  no  money  to  spare,  she  brought  me, 
with  her  husband's  blessing,  presents  of  wine,  and 
jellies,  and  delicate  meat,  to  buy  which,  I  knew  right 
well,  she  and  her  husband  and  her  children  must 
have  pinched  themselves  down  to  scanty  rations  of 
bread  and  water.  Her  hands  helped  mine  to  put  the 
flowers  in  poor  Richard 's  cofSn ;  she  bore  me  up  while 
I  followed  it,  pale  and  trembling,  to  the  grave;  and 
when  that  horrible  day  was  coming  to  an  end,  and 
she  was  about  to  return  home,  she  took  me  into  her 
arms,  and  covering  me  with  kisses  and  caressings, 
and  a  thousand  gentle  sayings,  as  if  I  had  been  a 
child  of  her  own,  instead  of  her  sister  and  a  grown 
woman,  she  made  me  promise  to  come  down  to  her 
at  Stratford  at  the  end  of  the  week,  and  stay  with 
her  till  God  should  give  me  strength  and  spirits  and 
guidance,  to  work  for  myself  again. 

"But  that  promise  was  not  kept.  Next  morning 
the  rough-tender  doctor  came  in,  out  of  his  mere 
goodness,  to  give  me  a  friendly  look,  and  a  'God 
speed  you,'  and  found  me,  too,  sickening  for  an  ill- 
ness. I  knew,  sir,  he  had  made  the  discovery  before 
his  lips  confessed  a  word ;  for  when  he  had  taken  my 
wrist  and  felt  my  pulse,  and  looked  up  into  my  worn 
face,  he  turned  pale,  as  if  almost  frightened,  and 
such  a  look  of  grief  came  on  his  eyes  and  lips  that 
he  could  not  have  said  plainer,  'My  poor  woman!  my 
poor  woman !  what  I  feared  from  the  beginning,  and 
praj'ed  God  not  to  permit,  has  come  to  pass  at  last.' 

' '  Then  I  fairly  broke  down  and  cried  bitterly ;  and 
I  told  the  doctor  how  sore  afflicted  I  was— how  God 
had  taken  my  husband  and  babe  from  me— how  all 
my  little  means  had  been  consumed  in  the  expenses 


A   BOOK  ABOUT   DOCTORS.  447 

of  nursing— how  the  little  furniture  in  my  rooms 
would  not  pay  half  what  I  owed  to  honest  folk— and 
how,  even  in  my  unspeakable  wretchedness,  I  could 
not  ask  the  Almighty  to  take  away  my  life,  for  I 
could  not  rest  in  death  if  I  left  the  world  without 
paying  my  just  debts.  Well,  sir,  the  doctor  sate  down 
by  me,  and  said,  in  his  softest  and  simplest  way  :— 

"  'Come,  come,  neighbour,  don't  you  frighten 
yourself.  Be  calm,  and  listen  to  me.  Don't  let  the 
thought  of  debts  worry  you.  What  little  I  have  done 
in  the  way  of  business  for  your  poor  child  and  hus- 
band I  never  wish  to  be  paid  for— so  there's  your 
greatest  creditor  disposed  of.  As  for  the  others, 
they  won't  trouble  you,  for  I'll  undertake  to  see  that 
none  of  them  shall  think  that  you  have  wronged  'em. 
I  wish  I  could  do  more,  neighbor;  but  I  ain't  a  rich 
man,  and  I  have  got  a  wife  and  a  regiment  of  little 
ones  at  home,  who  wcn't  help,  in  the  long  run,  to 
make  me  richer— although  I  am  sure  they'll  make 
me  happier.  But  now  for  yourself;  you  must  go  to 
the  fever-hospital,  to  have  your  illness  out;  the  phy- 
sician who'll  take  care  of  you  there  is  the  cleverest 
in  all  London;  and,  as  he  is  an  old  friend  of  mine, 
I  can  ask  him  to  pay  especial  attention  to  you.  You'll 
find  it  a  pleasant,  cheerful  place,  much  more  cool  and 
comfortable  than  your  rooms  here ;  the  nurses  are  all 
of  them  good  people;  and  while  lying  on  your  bed 
there  you  won't  have  to  fret  yourself  with  thinking 
how  you  are  to  pay  for  the  doctors,  and  medicine, 
and  kitchen  physic' 

"I  was  only  too  thankful  to  assent  to  all  the  doc- 
tor said;  and  forthwith  he  fetched  a  coach,  put  me 
into  it,  and  took  me  off  to  the  fever-hospital,  to  which 


448  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

his  influence  procured  me  instant  admittance.  With- 
out delay  I  was  conveyed  to  a  large  and  comfortable 
bed,  which,  with  another  similar  bed  parallel  to  it, 
was  placed  against  the  wall  at  the  end  of  a  long  gal- 
lery, containing  twenty  other  beds.  The  first  day  of 
my  hospital  life  I  spent  tranquilly  enough;  the  lan- 
guor of  extreme  exhaustion  had  soothed  me,  and  my 
malady  had  not  robbed  me  of  my  senses.  So  I  lay 
calmly  on  my  couch  and  watched  all  the  proceedings 
and  arrangements  of  the  great  bed-room.  I  noticed 
how  clean  and  white  all  the  beds  looked,  and  what 
kindly  women  the  nurses  were;  I  lemarked  what  a 
wide  space  there  was  down  the  middle  of  the  room 
between  the  two  rows  of  beds,  and  again  what  large 
intervals  there  were  between  the  beds  on  each  side; 
I  observed,  too,  that  over  every  bed  there  was  a  ven- 
tilator set  in  the  wall,  and  beneath  the  ventilator  a 
board,  on  which  was  pinned  a  paper,  bearing,  in  a 
fiUed-up  printed  form,  the  number  of  the  bed  to 
which  it  belonged,  the  date  when  the  occupant  was 
admitted  to  the  ward,  the  names  of  the  physician 
and  nurse  under  whose  charge  she  was,  the  medicine 
she  was  taking,  and  the  diet  on  which  she  was  put. 
It  made  me  smile,  moreover,  to  note  how  the  nurses, 
when  giving  physic  or  nourishment,  or  otherwise  at- 
tending to  their  charges,  would  frequently  address 
them  by  the  numbers  on  their  boards,  instead  of  their 
names. 

"  'Nurse,  dear,'  I  asked,  with  a  smile,  when  my 
attendant  came  near  me,  '  what 's  my  name  ? ' 

"  'Oh,  dear!'  said  she,  looking  up  at  the  board 
which  had  already  been  fixed  over  my  head,  'your 
name  is  Number  Eleven, ' 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  449 

"It  would  be  hard  for  me  to  give  you,  sir,  any  no- 
tion of  how  these  words,  Number  Eleven,  took  pos- 
session of  my  mind.  This  was  the  more  strange,  be- 
cause the  nurse  did  not  usually  call  me  by  them ;  for 
she  was  a  motherly  creature,  and  almost  always  ad- 
dressed me  as  'poor  dear,'  or  'poor  child';  and  the 
doctors  who  had  the  charge  of  me  spoke  to  me  as 
'friend,'  or  'old  friend,'  or  'neighbor.'  But  all  the 
same  for  that,  I  always  thought  of  myself  as  Num- 
ber Eleven ;  and  ere  many  days,  if  any  one  had  asked 
me  what  my  name  was,  I  could  not  for  the  life  of 
me  have  remembered  Abigail  Mallet,  but  should  have 
answered  Number  Eleven.  The  patient  in  the  next 
bed  to  me  was  Number  Twenty-two;  she  was,  like 
myself,  a  poor  woman  who  had  just  lost  a  husband 
and  child  by  the  fever,  and  both  of  us  were  much 
struck,  and  then  drawn  to  each  other,  by  discover- 
ing how  we  had  suffered  alike.  We  often  inter- 
changed a  few  words  during  the  sorrowful  hours  of 
the  long,  hot  nights,  but  our  whisperings  always 
turned  on  the  same  subject.  'Number  Eleven,'  I 
used  to  hear  her  poor  thin  lips  murmur,  'are  you 
thinking  of  your  baby,  dear  ? '  '  To  be  sure,  darling, ' 
I  would  answer;  'I  am  awake,  and  when  I  am  awake, 
I  am  always  thinking  of  her.'  Then  most  times  she 
would  inquire,  'Number  Eleven,  dear,  which  do  you 
think  of  most— the  little  one  or  her  father?'  Where- 
to I  would  reply,  'I  think  of  both  alike,  dear,  for 
whenever  I  look  at  her,  a  fair  young  angel  in  heaven 
—she  seems  to  be  lying  in  her  father's  arms.'  And 
after  we  had  conversed  so.  No.  22  would  be  qiiiet  for 
a  few  minutes ;  and  often,  in  the  silence  of  the  night, 
I  could  at  such  times  hear  that  which  informed  me 

4—29 


450  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

the  poor  woman  was  weeping  to  herself— in  such  a 
way  that  she  was  happier  for  her  tears. 

"But  my  malady  progressed  unfavourably.  Each 
succeeding  night  was  worse  to  endure ;  and  the  morn- 
ing light,  instead  of  bringing  refreshment  and  hope, 
only  gave  to  me  a  dull,  gloomy  consciousness  that  I 
had  passed  hours  in  delirium,  and  that  I  was  weaker 
and  heavier  in  heart,  and  more  unlikely  than  ever  to 
hold  my  head  up  again.  They  cut  all  the  hair  off  my 
head,  and  put  blisters  at  the  back  of  my  nock;  but 
the  awful  weight  of  sorrow  and  the  gnawing  heat 
kept  on  my  brain  all  the  same.  I  could  no  longer 
amuse  myself  with  looking  at  what  went  on  in  the 
ward ;  I  lost  all  care  for  the  poor  woman  who  lay  in 
the  next  bed ;  and  soon  I  tossed  to  and  fro,  and 
heeded  nothing  of  the  outer  world  except  the  burn- 
ing, and  aching,  and  thirst,  and  sleeplessness  that 
encased  me. 

"One  morning  I  opened  my  eyes  and  saw  the  doc- 
tor standing  between  me  and  No.  22,  talking  to  the 
nurse.  A  fit  of  clearness  passed  over  my  under- 
standing, such  as  people  suffering  under  fever  often 
experience  for  a  few  seconds,  and  I  heard  the  phy- 
sician say  softly  to  the  nurses,  'We  must  be  careful 
and  do  our  best,  sister,  and  leave  the  rest  to  God. 
They  are  both  very  ill;  this  is  now  the  fourth  day 
since  either  of  them  recognized  me.  They  must  have 
more  wine  and  brandy  to  help  them  through.  Here, 
give  me  their  boards.'  On  this,  the  nurse  took  down 
the  boards,  and  handed  them,  one  after  the  other,  to 
the  physician,  and  he,  taking  a  pen  from  a  clerk, 
who  always  attended  him,  wrote  his  directions  on  the 
papers,  and  handed  them  back  to  the  nurse.    Having 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTOBS.  451 

heard  and  seen  all  this,  I  shifted  in  my  bed,  and  after 
a  few  weak  efforts  to  ponder  on  my  terrible  condi- 
tion, and  how  awful  a  thing  it  is  to  die,  I  fell  back 
into  my  former  state  of  delirium  and  half-eonscious- 
ness. 

"The  next  distinct  memory  I  have  of  my  illness 
was  when  I  opened  my  eyes  and  beheld  a  wooden 
screen  standing  between  me  and  the  next  bed.  My 
head  felt  as  if  it  had  been  put  into  a  closely  fitting 
cap  of  ice;  but  apart  from  this  strange  sensation,  I 
was  free  from  pain.  My  body  was  easy,  and  my 
mind  was  tranquil.  My  nurse  was  standing  at  the 
foot  of  my  bed,  looking  towards  me  with  an  expres- 
sion of  solemn  tenderness;  and  by  her  side  was  an- 
other woman— as  I  afterwards  found  out,  a  new 
nurse,  unaccustomed  to  the  ways  of  the  hospital. 

' '  '  What  is  that  screen  there  for  ? '  asked  the  novice. 

"My  nurse  lowered  her  voice,  and  answered  slow- 
ly, 'Number  Eleven,  poor  soul,  is  dying;  she'll  be 
dead  in  half  an  hour;  and  the  screen  is  there  so  that 
Number  Twenty-Two  mayn't  see  her.' 

"  'Poor  soul !'  said  the  novice, 'may  God  have  mercy 
upon  her ! ' 

"They  spoke  scarcely  above  a  whisper,  but  I  heard 
them  distinctly;  and  a  solemn  gladness,  such  as  I 
used  to  feel,  when  I  was  a  young  girl,  at  the  sound 
of  church  music,  came  over  me  at  learning  that  I 
was  to  die.  Only  half  an  hour,  and  I  should  be  with 
baby  and  Richard  in  heaven!  Mixed  with  this 
thought,  too,  there  was  a  pleasant  memory  of  those 
I  had  loved  and  who  had  loved  me— of  sister  Martha 
and  her  husband  and  children,  of  the  doctor  who 
had  been  so  good  to  me  and  brought  me  to  the  hos- 


452  A    BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

pital,  of  my  lady  in  India,  of  many  others;  and  I 
silently  prayed  the  Almighty  with  my  dying  heart 
to  protect  and  bless  them.  Then  passed  through  me 
a  fluttering  of  strange,  soft  fancies,  and  it  was  re- 
vealed to  me  that  I  was  dead. 

"By-and-by  the  physician  came  his  round  of  the 
ward,  stepping  lightly,  pausing  at  each  bed,  speaking 
softly  to  nurses  and  patients,  and,  without  knowing 
it,  making  many  a  poor  woman  entertain  kinder 
thoughts  than  she  had  ever  meant  to  cherish  of  the 
wealthy  and  gentle.  When  he  came  to  the  end  of 
the  ward,  his  handsome  face  wore  a  pitiful  air,  and 
it  was  more  by  the  movement  of  his  lips  than  by  the 
sound  of  his  mouth  that  I  knew  what  passed  from 
him  to  the  nurse. 

"  'Well,  sister,  well,'  he  said,  'she  sleeps  quietly  at 
last.  Poor  thing!  I  hope  and  believe  the  next  life 
will  be  a  fairer  one  for  her  than  this  has  been.' 

"  'Her  sister  has  been  written  to,'  observed  the 
nurse. 

"  'Quite  right;  and  how  is  the  other?' 

"  'Oh,  No.  22  is  just  the  same— quite  still,  not  mov- 
ing at  all,  scarcely  breathing,  sir!' 

"  'Um!— you  must  persevere.  Possibly  she'll  pull 
through.    Good-bye,  sister.' 

' '  Late  in  the  evening  my  sister  Martha  came.  She 
was  dressed  in  black,  and  led  with  her  hand  Rhoda, 
her  eldest  daughter.  Poor  Martha  was  very  pale, 
and  worn,  and  ill;  when  she  approached  the  bed  on 
which  I  lay,  she  seemed  as  if  she  would  faint,  and  she 
trembled  so  painfully  that  my  kind  nurse  led  her 
behind  the  screen,  so  that  she  might  recover  herself 
out  of  my  sight.    After  a  few  seconds— say  two  min- 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  453 

utes — she  stood  again  at  the  foot  of  my  bed— calmer, 
but  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  and  such  a  mournful  love- 
liness in  her  sweet  face  as  I  had  never  seen  before. 

"  'I  shouldn't  have  known  her,  nurse,'  she  said, 
gazing  at  me  for  a  short  space  and  then  withdrawing 
her  eyes— 'she  is  so  much  altered.' 

"  'Ah,  dear!'  answered  the  nurse,  'sickness  alters 
people  much— and  death  more.' 

"  'I  know  it,  nurse— I  know  it.  An^  she  looks 
very  calm  and  blissful— her  face  is  so  full  of  rest- 
so  full  of  rest ! ' 

"The  nurse  fetched  some  seats,  and  made  Martha 
and  Rhoda  sit  down  side  by  side;  and  then  the  good 
woman  stood  by  them,  ready  to  afford  them  all  com- 
fort in  her  power. 

"  'How  did  she  bear  her  illness ?'  inquired  Martha. 

"  'Like  an  angel,  dear,'  answered  the  nurse.  'She 
had  a  sweet,  grateful,  loving  temper.  Whatever  I 
did  for  her,  even  though  my  duty  compelled  me  to 
give  her  pain,  she  was  never  fretful,  but  always  con- 
cealed her  anguish  and  said,  ' '  Thank  you,  dear,  thank 
you,  you  are  very  good;  God  will  reward  you  for 
all  your  goodness";  and  as  the  end  came  nigher  I 
often  fancied  that  she  had  reasonable  and  happy 
moments,  for  she  would  fold  her  hands  together,  and 
say  scraps  of  prayers  which  children  are  taught.' 

"  'Nurse,'  replied  my  sister  after  a  pause,  'she  and 
I  were  the  only  children  of  our  father,  and  we  were 
left  orphans  very  young.  She  was  two  years  older 
than  I,  and  she  always  thought  for  me  and  did  for 
me  as  if  she  had  been  my  mother.  I  could  fill  whole 
hours  with  telling  j'ou  all  the  goodness  and  forbear- 
ance and  love  she  displayed  to  me,  from  the  time  I 


454  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

was  little  or  no  bigger  than  my  child  here.  I  was 
often  wayward  and  peevish,  and  gave  her  many  hours 
of  trouble,  but  though  at  times  she  could  be  hot  to 
others  she  never  spoke  an  unkind  word  to  me.  There 
was  no  sacrifice  that  she  would  not  have  made  for  me ; 
but  all  the  return  I  ever  made  was  to  worry  her  with 
my  evil  jealous  temper.  I  was  continually  imagining 
unchristian  things  against  her:  that  she  slighted  me; 
that,  because  she  had  a  mistress  who  made  much  of 
her,  she  didn't  care  for  me;  that  she  didn't  think 
my  children  fit  to  be  proud  of.  And  I  couldn't  keep 
all  these  foolish  thoughts  in  my  head  to  myself,  but 
I  must  needs  go  and  speak  them  out  to  her,  and  ir- 
ritate her  to  quarrel  with  me.  But  she  always  re- 
turned smooth  words  to  my  angry  ones,  and  I  had 
never  a  fit  of  my  unjust  temper  but  she  charmed  me 
out  of  it,  and  showed  me  my  error  in  such  a  way  that 
I  was  reproved,  without  too  much  humiliation,  and 
loved  her  more  than  ever.  Oh!  dear  friend,  dear 
good  nurse,  if  you  have  a  sister,  don't  treat  her,  as 
1  did  Abigail,  with  suspicion  and  wicked  passion ;  for 
should  you,  all  the  light  speeches  of  your  froward- 
ness  will  return  to  you,  and  lie  heavy  on  your  heart 
when  hers  shall  beat  no  more.' 

"When  Martha  had  said  this  she  cried  very  bit- 
terly; and  as  I  lay  dead  on  my  bed,  and  listened  to 
her  unfair  self-reproaches,  I  longed  to  break  the  icy 
bonds  that  held  me,  and  yearned  to  clasp  her  to  my 
breast.  Still,  though  I  could  neither  move  nor  utter 
a  sound,  it  thriUed  me  with  gladness  to  see  how  she 
loved  me. 

"  'Mother,'  said  little  Rhoda,  softly,  'don't  cry. 
We  shan't  be  long  away  from  Aunt  and  her  baby, 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  455 

for  when  this  life  is  done  we  shall  go  to  them.  You 
know,  mother,  you  told  me  so  last  night.' 

"It  was  not  permitted  to  me  to  hear  any  more.  A 
colder  chill  came  over  my  brain— and,  wrapt  in  un- 
consciousness and  deep  stillness,  I  lay  upon  my  bed. 

"My  next  recollection  is  of  beholding  the  gray 
dawn  stream  in  through  the  half-opened  windows, 
and  of  wondering,  amid  vague  reminiscences  of  my 
previous  sensations,  how  it  was  that  a  dead  person 
could  take  notice  of  the  world  it  moved  in  when  alive. 
It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  my  experience  of  the  last 
repose  was  pleasant  to  me ;  I  was  rejoiced  and  greatly 
delighted  by  it.  Death,  it  seemed  then,  was  no  state 
of  cold  decay  for  men  to  shudder  at  with  affright- 
but  a  condition  of  tranquility  and  mental  comfort. 
I  continued  to  muse  on  this  remarkable  discovery 
for  an  hour  and  more,  when  my  favourite  nurse  re- 
appeared to  relieve  the  woman  who  had  taken  the 
night-watch,  and  approached  me. 

"  'Ah!'  she  surprised  me  by  saying,  as  a  smile  of 
congratulation  lighted  her  face,  'then  you  are  alive 
this  morning,  dear,  and  have  your  handsome  eyes 
wide  open.' 

"This  in  my  opinion  was  a  singularly  strange  and 
inappropriate  address ;  but  I  made  no  attempt  to  re- 
spond to  it,  for  I  knew  that  I  was  dead,  and  that  the 
dead  do  not  speak. 

"  'Why,  dear  heart,'  resumed  the  nurse,  kneeling 
by  my  side  and  kissing  me,  'can't  you  find  your 
tongue?  I  know  by  your  eyes  that  you  know  me; 
the  glassy  stare  has  left  them.  Come,  do  say  a  word, 
and  say  you  are  better.' 

"Then  a  suspicion  flashed  across  my  brain,  and 


456  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

raising  my  right  lir.nd  slightly,  I  pointed  to  the  bed 
of  No.  22,  and  asked,  'How  is  .she?— how  is  she?' 

"  'Don't  frighten  yourself,  dear,'  answered  the 
nurse,  'she  isa'L  there.  She  has  been  moved.  She 
doesn't  have  that  bed  r.ny  longer!' 

"  'Then  it  is  she  who  is  dead,  nurse;  and  all  the 
rest  was  a  dream?    It  is  she  who  is  dead?' 

"  'Hush,  hush,  dear!  sl.e  has  gone  to  rest—' 

"Yes!  it  was  all  clear  to  me.  Not  I  but  my  un- 
fortunate companion  had  died ;  and  in  my  delirious 
fancy  I  had  regarded  the  friends  who  came  to  see 
her,  and  convey  her  to  the  grave,  as  my  sister  Mar- 
tha and  her  little  daughter  Rhoda.  I  did  not  im- 
part to  the  nurse  the  delusion  of  which  I  had  been 
the  victim;  for,  as  is  often  the  case  with  the  sick,  I 
■was  sensitive  with  regard  to  the  extreme  mental  sick- 
ness into  which  I  had  fallen,  and  the  vagaries  of  my 
reason.  So  I  kept  my  secret  to  the  best  of  my  pow- 
er; and  having  recognised  how  much  better  I  was, 
how  the  fever  had  quitted  my  veins  and  the  weight 
had  left  my  head,  I  thanked  God  in  my  heart  for  all 
his  mercies,  and  once  more  cherished  a  hope  that  he 
might  see  fit  to  restore  me  to  health. 

"My  recovery  was  rapid.  At  the  end  of  a  fort- 
night I  was  moved  into  the  convalescents'  ward,  and 
wa8  fed  up  with  wine  and  meat  in  abundance.  I  had 
every  reason  to  be  thankful  for  all  the  kindness  be- 
stowed on  me  in  the  hospital,  and  all  the  good  effect 
God  permitted  that  kindness  to  have.  But  one  thing 
troubled  me  very  much  and  cut  me  to' the  quick.  Ever 
since  I  had  been  in  the  hospital  my  sister  had  neither 
been  to  see  me,  nor  sent  to  inquire  after  me.  It  was 
no  very  diiScult  business  to  account  for  her  neglect 


A    BOOK    ABOUT    DOCTORS.  457 

of  me.  She  had  her  good  qualities  (even  in  the  height 
of  my  anger  I  could  not  deny  that),  but  she  was  of 
a  very  proud  high  temper.  She  could  sacrifice  any- 
thing but  her  pride  for  love  of  me.  I  had  gone  into 
an  hospital,  had  received  public  charity,  and  she  hadn't 
courage  to  acknowledge  a  sister  who  had  sunk  so  low 
as  that !  But  if  she  was  proud  so  was  I  ;  I  could 
be  as  high  and  haughty  as  she  ;  and,  what  was  more, 
I  would  show  her  that  I  could  be  50  !  What,  to  leave 
her  own  sister  —  her  only  sister  —  who  had  worked 
for  her  when  she  was  little,  and  who  had  loved 
her  as  her  own  heart  !  I  would  resent  it !  Perhaps 
fortune  might  yet  have  a  turn  to  make  in  my  favour  ; 
and  if  so  I  would  in  my  prosperity  remember  how 
I  had  been  treated  in  my  adversity.  I  am  filled  with 
shame  now,  when  I  think  on  the  revengeful  imagi- 
nations which  followed  each  other  through  my  breast, 
I  am  thankful  that  when  my  animosity  was  at  its 
height  my  sister  did  not  present  herself  before  me ; 
for  had  she  done  so,  I  fear  that,  without  waiting  for 
an  explanation  from  her,  I  should  have  spoken  hasty 
words  that  (however  much  I  might  have  afterwards 
repented  them,  and  she  forgiven  them)  would  have 
rendered  it  impossible  for  us  to  be  again  the  same  as 
we  were  before.  I  never  mentioned  to  any  one  — 
nurse  or  patient  —  in  the  convalescent  ward,  the  secret 
of  my  clouded  brows,  or  let  out  that  I  had  a  friend 
in  the  world  to  think  of  me  or  to  neglect  me.  Hour 
after  hour  I  listened  to  women  and  girls  and  young 
children,  talking  of  home  pleasures  and  longing  to  be 
quite  well,  and  dismissed  from  the  confinement  of 
the  hospital,  and  anticipating  the  pleasure  which 
their    husbands,    or    mothers,    or   sisters,    or    children. 


458  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

would  express  at  welcoming  them  again ;  but  I  never 
gave  a  word  of  such  gossip;  I  only  hearkened,  and 
compared  their  hopes  with  my  desolation,  morosely 
and  vindictively.  Before  I  was  declared  perfectly 
restored  I  got  very  tired  of  my  imprisonment;  in- 
deed the  whole  time  I  was  in  the  convalescent  ward 
my  life  was  wearisome,  and  without  any  of  the  pleas- 
ures which  the  first  days  of  my  sickness  had  had. 
There  was  only  one  inmate  of  the  ward  to  which  I 
was  at  first  admitted,  as  yet,  amongst  the  con- 
valescents; none  of  them  knew  me,  unless  it  was  by 
my  number— a  new  one  now,  for  on  changing  my 
ward  I  had  changed  my  number  also.  The  nurses  I 
didn't  like  so  well  as  my  first  kind  attendant;  and 
I  couldn't  feel  charitably,  or  in  any  way  as  a  Christ- 
ian ought  to  feel,  to  the  poor  people  by  whom  I  was 
surrounded. 

"At  length  the  day  came  for  my  discharge.  The 
matron  inquired  of  me  where  I  was  going;  but  I 
would  not  tell  her;  I  would  not  acknowledge  that  I 
had  a  sister— partly  out  of  mere  perverseness,  and 
partly  out  of  an  angry  sense  of  honour;  for  I  was  a 
country-bred  woman,  and  attached  to  the  thought  of 
'going  into  a  hospital'  a  certain  idea  of  shame  and 
degradation,  such  as  country  people  attach  to  'going 
on  the  parish',  and  I  was  too  proud  to  let  folk  know 
that  my  sister  had  a  sister  in  an  hospital,  when  she 
clearly  flinched  from  having  as  much  said  of  her. 

"Well,  finding  I  was  not  in  a  communicative  hu- 
mour, the  matron  asked  no  more  questions;  but,  giv- 
ing me  a  bundle  containing  a  few  articles  of  wearing 
apparel,  and  a  small  donation  of  money,  bade  me 
farewell;   and  ^\^thout  saying  half  as  much  in  the 


A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  459 

way  of  gratitude  as  I  ought  to  have  said,  I  walked 
out  from  the  hospital  garden  into  the  wide  streets  of 
London.  I  did  not  go  straight  to  my  old  lodgings, 
or  to  the  house  of  the  doctor  who  had  been  so  kind 
to  me ;  but  I  directed  my  steps  to  an  inn  in  Holborn, 
and  took  a  place  in  the  stage-cart  for  Stratford.  As 
I  rode  slowly  to  my  sister's  town  I  thought  within 
myself  how  I  should  treat  her.  Somehow  my  heart 
had  softened  a  great  deal  towards  her  during  the 
few  last  days;  a  good  spirit  within  me  had  set  me 
thinking  of  how  she  had  helped  me  to  nurse  my  hus- 
band and  baby— how  she  had  accompanied  me  when 
I  followed  them  to  their  graves— how  she  and  her 
husband  had  sacrificed  themselves  so  much  to  assist 
me  in  my  trial ;  and  the  recollection  of  these  kind- 
nesses and  proofs  of  sisterly  love,  I  am  thankful  to 
know,  made  me  judge  Martha  much  less  harshly. 
Tes !  yes !  I  would  forgive  her !  She  had  never  of- 
fended me  before!  She  had  not  wronged  me  seven 
times,  or  seventy  times  seven,  but  only  once  I  After 
all,  how  much  she  had  done  for  me !  Who  was  I,  that 
I  should  forget  all  that  she  had  done,  and  judge  her 
only  by  what  she  had  left  undone  ? 

' '  The  stage-cart  reached  Stratford  as  the  afternoon 
began  to  close  into  evening ;  and  when  I  alighted  from 
it,  I  started  off  at  a  brisk  pace,  and  walked  to  my  sis- 
ter's cottage  that  stood  on  the  outskirts  of  the  town. 
Strange  to  say,  as  I  got  nearer  and  nearer  to  her 
door  my  angry  feelings  became  fainter  and  fainter, 
and  all  my  loving  memories  of  her  strong  affection  for 
me  worked  so  in  me  that  my  knees  trembled  beneath 
me,  and  my  eyes  were  blinded  with  tears— though, 
if   I   had    trusted    my    deceitful,    wicked,    malicious 


460  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

tongue  to  speak,  I  should  still  have  declared  she  was  a 
bad,  heartless,  worthless,  sister. 

"I  reached  the  threshold,  and  paused  on  the  step 
before  it,  just  to  get  my  breath  and  to  collect  as 
much  courage  and  presence  of  mind  as  would  let 
Martha  know  that,  though  I  forgave  her,  I  still  was 
fully  aware  she  might  have  acted  more  nobly.  When 
I  knocked,  after  a  few  seconds,  little  Rhoda's  steps 
pattered  down  the  passage,  and  opened  the  door. 
Why,  the  child  was  in  black !  ^Miat  did  that  mean  ? 
Had  anything  happened  to  Martha  or  her  husband, 
or  little  Tommy  ?  But  before  I  could  put  the  question 
Rhoda  turned  deadly  white,  and  ran  back  into  the 
living-room.  In  another  instant  I  heard  Tommy 
screaming  at  the  top  of  his  voice;  and  in  a  trice  I 
was  in  the  room,  with  Martha's  arms  flung  round 
my  neck,  and  her  dear  blessed  eyes  covering  me  with 
tears. 

"She  was  very  ill  in  appearance;  white  and  hag- 
gard, and,  like  Rhoda  and  Tommy,  she  too  was  dressed 
in  black.  For  some  minutes  she  could  not  speak  a 
word  for  sobbing  hysterically;  but  when  at  last  I  had 
quieted  her  and  kissed  Rhoda,  and  cossetted  Tommy 
till  he  had  left  off  screaming,  I  learnt  that  the  mourn- 
ing Martha  and  her  children  wore  was  in  my  hon- 
our. Sure  enough  Martha  had  received  a  notice  from 
the  hospital  of  my  death;  and  she  and  Rhoda  had 
not  only  presented  themselves  at  the  hospital,  and 
seen  there  a  dead  body  which  they  believed  to  be 
mine,  but  they  had  also,  with  considerable  expense, 
and  much  more  loving  care,  had  it  interred  in  the 
Stratford  churchyard,  under  the  impression  that  in 
so  doing  they  were  offering  me  the  last  respect  which 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  461 

it  would  be  in  their  power  to  render  me.  The  worst 
of  it  was  that  poor  Martha  had  pined  and  sorrowed  so 
for  me  that  she  seemed  likely  to  fall  into  some  severe 
illness. 

' '  On  inquiry  it  appeared  that  the  morning  when  I 
and  No.  22  were  so  much  worse,  and  the  doctor  altered 
the  directions  of  our  boards,  the  nurse  by  mistake 
put  the  No.  22  board  over  my  bed,  and  my  board  (No. 
11)  over  the  bed  of  the  poor  woman  who  had  died. 
The  consequence  was  that,  when  the  hospital  clerk 
was  informed  that  No.  11  had  died,  he  wrote  to  the 
doctor  who  placed  me  in  the  hospital,  informing  him 
of  my  death,  and  the  doctor  communicated  the  sad  in- 
telligence to  my  sister. 

"The  rest  of  the  story  you  can  fill  up,  sir,  for  your- 
self, and  without  my  assistance  you  can  imagine  how 
it  was  that,  while  in  a  state  of  extreme  exhaustion, 
and  deeming  myself  dead,  I  heard  my  sister,  in  a 
strong  agony  of  sorrow  and  self-reproach,  say  to  my 
nurse,  'Oh,  dear  friend— dear  good  nurse— if  you 
have  a  sister,  don't  treat  her,  as  I  did  Abigail,  with 
suspicion  and  wicked  passion ;  for  should  you,  all  the 
light  speeches  of  j'our  frowardness  will  return  to  you, 
and  lie  heavy  on  your  heart  when  hers  shall  beat  no 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 


MEDICAL   BUILDINGS. 


The  medical  buildings  of  London  are  seldom  or 
never  visited  by  the  sight-seers  of  the  metropolis. 
Though  the  science  and  art  of  nursing  have  recently 
been  made  sources  of  amusement  to  the  patrons  of 
circulating  libraries,  the  good  sense  and  delicacy  of 
the  age  are  against  converting  the  wards  of  an  hos- 
pital into  galleries  for  public  amusement.  In  the  last 
century  the  reverse  was  the  case.  Fashionable  idlers 
were  not  indeed  anxious  to  pry  into  the  mysteries  of 
Bartholomew's,  Guy's,  and  St.  Thomas's  hospitals; 
for  a  visit  to  those  magnificent  institutions  was  as- 
sociated in  their  minds  with  a  risk  of  catching  fevers 
or  the  disfiguring  small-pox.  But  Bethlehem,  de- 
voted to  the  entertainment  and  cure  of  the  insane, 
was  a  favourite  haunt  with  all  classes.  "Pepys," 
"The  London  Spy,"  "The  Tatler,"  and  "The  Rake's 
Progress,"  give  us  vivid  pictures  of  a  noisy  rout  of 
Pall  Mall  beaus  and  belles,  country  fly-catchers,  and 
London  scamps,  passing  up  and  down  the  corridors 
of  the  great  asylum,  mocking  its  unhappy  inmates 
with  brutal  jests,  or  investigating  and  gossiping  about 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  463 

their  delusions  and  extravagances  with  unfeeling  cu- 
riosity. Samuel  Johnson  enlivened  himself  with  an 
occasional  stroll  amongst  the  lunatics,  just  as  he  pe- 
riodically indulged  himself  with  witnessing  a  hang- 
ing, a  judicial  flogging,  or  any  other  of  the  pleasant 
spectacles  with  which  Hogarth's  London  abounded. 
Boswell  and  he  once  strolled  through  the  mansions 
of  the  insane;  and  on  another  occasion,  when  he  vis- 
ited the  same  abode  with  Murphy,  Foote,  and  Wed- 
derburne  (afterwards  Lord  Loughborough),  the  phi- 
losopher's "attention  was  arrested  by  a  man  who 
was  very  furious,  and  who,  while  beating  his  straw, 
supposed  it  was  William,  Duke  of  Cumberland,  whom 
he  was  punishing  for  his  cruelties  in  Scotland  in 
1746."  Steele,  when  he  took  three  schoolboys  (imag- 
ine the  glee  of  Sir  Richard's  schoolboy  friends  out 
■with  him  for  a  frolic)  in  a  hackney  coach  to  show 
them  the  town,  paid  his  respects  to  "the  lions,  the 
tombs.  Bedlam,  and  the  other  places,  which  are  en- 
tertainments to  raw  minds  because  they  strike  forci- 
bly on  the  fancy."  In  the  same  way  Pepys  "stept 
into  Bedlam,  and  saw  several  poor  miserable  crea- 
tures in  chains,  one  of  whom  was  tnad  with  making 
verses,"  a  form  of  mental  aberration  not  uncommon 
in  these  days,  though  we  do  not  deem  it  necessary 
to  consign  the  victims  of  it  to  medical  guardian- 
ship. 

The  original  Bethlehem  hospital  was  established 
by  Henry  VIII.,  in  a  religious  house  that  had  been 
founded  in  1246,  by  Simon  Fitz-Mary,  Sheriff  of 
London,  as  an  ecclesiastical  body.  The  house  was  sit- 
uated at  Charing-cross,  and  very  soon  the  king  began 
to  find  it  (when  used  for  the  reception  of  lunatics) 


464  A    BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

disagreeably  near  liis  own  residence.  The  asyliua  was 
therefore  removed,  at  a  "cost  nigh  £17,000,"  to 
Bishopgate  Without,  where  it  remained  till  1814,  and 
the  inmates  were  removed  to  the  present  noble  hos- 
pital in  St.  George's  Fields,  the  first  stone  of  which 
was  laid  April  18tJi,  1812. 

One  of  the  regulations  of  old  Bedlam  has  long  since 
been  disused.  The  harmless  lunatics  were  allowed 
to  roam  about  the  country  with  a  tin  badge— the  star 
of  St.  Bethlehem — on  the  right  arm.  Tenderness 
towards  those  to  whom  the  Almighty  has  denied  rea<- 
son  is  a  sentiment  not  confined  to  the  East.  Wherever 
these  poor  creatures  went  they  received  alms  and 
kindly  entreatment.  The  ensign  on  the  right  arm 
announced  to  the  world  their  lamentable  eonditiou 
and  their  need  of  help,  and  the  appeal  was  always 
mercifully  responded  to.  Aubrey  thus  describes  their 
appearance  and  condition:— 

'■'Till  the  breaking  out  of  the  Civil  Wars  Tom  o' 
Bedlams  did  travel  about  the  country.  They  had 
been  poor  distracted  men,  but  had  been  put  into  Bed- 
lam, where  recovering  some  soberness,  they  were  li- 
centiated  to  go  a-begging,  i.  e.  they  had  on  their  left 
arm  an  armilla  of  tin,  about  four  inches  long;  they 
could  not  get  it  off.  They  wore  aboui  their  necks 
a  great  horn  of  an  ox  in  a  string  of  baudry,  which, 
when  they  came  to  an  house  for  alms,  they  did  wind, 
and  they  did  put  the  drink  given  them  into  this  horn, 
whereto  they  did  put  the  stopple.  Since  the  wars 
I  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  any  one  of  them." 

The  custom,  however,  continued  long  after  the  ter- 
mination of  the  Civil  War.  It  is  not  now  the  humane 
practice  to  label  our  fools,  so  that  society  may  at  once 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  465 

recognise  them  and  entertain  them  with  kindness. 
They  still  go  at  large  in  our  public  ways.  Facilities 
are  even  given  them  for  effecting  an  entrance  into 
the  learned  professions.  Frequently  they  are  docket- 
ed with  titles  of  respect,  and  decked  with  the  robes 
of  office.  But  however  gratifying  this  plan  may  be 
to  their  personal  vanity  it  is  not  unattended  with 
cruelty.  Having  about  them  no  external  mark  of 
their  sad  condition,  they  are  often,  through  careless- 
ness and  misapprehension— not  through  hardness  of 
heart— chastised  with  undue  severity.  "Poor  Tom, 
thy  horn  is  dry,"  says  Edgar,  in  "Lear."  Never 
may  the  horn  of  mercy  be  dry  to  such  poor  wretches ! 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  Easter  holiday-makers 
are  no  longer  permitted  in  swanns,  on  the  payment 
of  two-pence  each,  to  race  through  the  St.  Bethlehem 
galleries,  insulting  with  their  ribaldry  the  most  pitia- 
ble of  God's  afflicted  creatures.  A  useful  lesson,  how- 
ever, is  taught  to  the  few  strangers  who  still,  as  mere- 
ly curious  observers,  obtain  admission  for  a  few  min- 
utes within  the  walls  of  the  asylum— a  lesson  con- 
veyed, not  by  the  sufferings  of  the  patients,  so  much 
as  by  the  gentle  discipline,  the  numerous  means  of 
innocent  amusement,  and  the  air  of  quiet  content- 
ment, which  are  the  characteristics  of  a  well-managed 
hospital  for  the  insane. 

Not  less  instructive  would  it  be  for  many  who  now 
know  of  them  only  through  begging  circulars  and 
charity  dinners,  to  inspect  the  well- ventilated,  cleanly 
—and  it  may  be  added,  c/ieer/'ul— dwellings  of  the 
impoverished  sick  of  London.  The  principal  hospit- 
als of  the  capital,  those,  namely,  to  which  medical 
schools    are    attached,    are    eleven    in    number— St, 

4— so 


466  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

George's,  the  London  (at  Mile  End),  University  Col- 
lege, King's,  St.  Mary's,  Westminster,  Middlesex, 
and  Charing-cross,  are  for  the  most  part  dependent 
on  voluntary  contributions  for  support,  the  West- 
minster Hospital  (instituted  1719)  being  the  first 
hospital  established  in  this  kingdom  on  the  voluntary 
system.  The  three  other  hospitals  of  the  eleven  have 
large  endowments,  Bartholomew's  and  Guy's  being 
amongst  the  wealthiest  benevolent  foundations  of  the 
country. 

Like  Bethlehem,  St.  Thomas's  Hospital  was  origi- 
nally a  religious  house.  At  the  dissolution  of  the  mon- 
asteries it  was  purchased  by  the  citizens  of  London, 
and,  in  the  year  1552,  was  opened  as  an  hospital  for 
the  sick.  At  the  commencement  of  the  last  century 
it  was  rebuilt  by  public  subscription,  three  wards 
being  erected  at  the  cost  6f  Thomas  Frederick,  and 
three  by  Guy,  the  founder  of  Guy's  Hospital. 

The  first  place  of  precedency  amongst  the  London 
Hospitals  is  contended  for  by  St.  Bartholomew's  and 
Guy's.  They  are  both  alike  important  by  their 
wealth,  the  number  of  patients  entertained  within 
their  walls,  and  the  celebrity  of  the  surgeons  and  phy- 
sicians with  whom  their  schools  have  enriched  the 
medical  profession ;  but  the  former,  in  respect  of  an- 
tiquity, has  superior  claims  to  respect.  Headers  re- 
quire no  introduction  to  the  founder  of  Bartholo- 
mew's, for  only  lately  Dr.  Doran,  in  his  "Court 
Pools,"  gave  a  sketch  of  Rahere— the  minstrel  and 
jester,  who  spent  his  prime  in  the  follies  and  vices 
of  courts,  and  his  riper  years  in  the  sacred  offices 
of  the  religious  vocation.  He  began  life  a  buffoon, 
and  ended  it  a  prior— presiding  over  the  establish- 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  467 

ment  to  the  creation  of  which  he  devoted  the  wealth 
earned  by  his  abused  wit.  The  monk  chronicler  says 
of  him:  "When  he  attained  the  flower  of  youth  he 
began  to  haunt  the  households  of  noblemen  and  the 
palaces  of  princes ;  where,  under  every  elbow  of  them, 
he  spread  their  cushions  with  apeings  and  flatter- 
ings,  delectably  anointing  their  eyes— by  this  manner 
to  draw  to  him  their  friendships.  And  yet  he  was 
not  content  with  this,  but  often  haunted  the  king's 
palace;  and,  among  the  press  of  that  tumultuous 
court,  enforced  himself  with  jollity  and  carnal  suav- 
ity, by  the  which  he  might  draw  to  him  the  hearts 
of  many  one."  But  the  gay  adventurer  found  that 
the  ways  of  mirth  were  far  from  those  of  true  glad- 
ness; and,  forsaking  quips,  and  jeers,  and  wanton 
ditties  for  deeds  of  mercy,  and  prayer,  and  songs  of 
praise,  he  long  was  an  ensample  unto  men  of  holy 
living;  and  "after  the  years  of  his  prelacy  (twenty- 
two  years  and  six  months),  the  20th  day  of  Sep- 
tember (a.  d.  1143),  the  clay-house  of  this  world  for- 
sook, and  the  house  everlasting  entered." 

In  the  church  of  St.  Bartholomew  may  still  be  seen 
the  tomb  of  Dr.  Francis  Anthony,  who,  in  spite  of 
the  prosecutions  of  the  College  of  Physicians,  en- 
joyed a  large  practice,  and  lived  in  pomp  in  Bar- 
tholomew Close,  where  he  died  in  1623.  The  merits 
of  his  celebrated  nostrum,  the  aurum  potabile,  to 
which  Boyle  gave  a  reluctant  and  qualified  approval, 
are  alluded  to  in  the  inscription  commemorating  his 
services: — 

"There  needs  no  verse  to  beautify  thy  praise, 
Or  keep  in  memory  thy  spotless  name. 
Religion,  virtue,  and  thy  skill  did  raise 
A  three-fold  pillar  to  thy  lasting  fame. 


468  A    BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

Though  poisonous  envy  ever  sought  to  blame 

Or  hide  the  fruits  of  thy  intention, 
Yet  shall  all  they  commend  that  high  design 
Of  purest  gold  to  make  a  medicine. 

That  feel  thy  help  by  that  thy  rare  inventioa" 

Boyle's  testimony  to  the  good  results  of  the  aurum 
potabile  is  interesting,  as  his  philosophic  mind  formed 
a  decided  opinion  on  the  efficacy  of  the  preparation 
by  observing  its  operation  in  two  cases—  persons  of 
great  note.  "Though,"  he  says,  "I  have  long  been 
prejudiced  against  the  aurum  potabile,  and  other 
boasted  preparations  of  gold,  for  most  of  which  I 
have  no  great  esteem,  yet  I  saw  such  extraordinary 
and  surprising  effects  from  the  tincture  of  gold  I 
spake  of  (prepared  by  two  foreign  physicians)  upon 
persons  of  great  note,  mth  whom  I  was  particularly 
acquainted,  both  before  they  fell  sick  and  after  their 
dangerous  recovery,  that  I  could  not  but  change  my 
opinion  for  a  very  favourable  one  as  to  some  prepara- 
tions of  gold." 

Attached  to  his  priory  of  St.  Bartholomew 's,  Rahere 
founded  an  hospital  for  the  relief  of  poor  and  sick 
persons,  out  of  which  has  grown  the  present  insti- 
tution, over  the  principal  gateway  of  which  stands, 
burly  and  with  legs  apart— like  a  big  butcher  watch- 
ing his  meat-stall— an  effigy  of  Henry  VIII.  Another 
of  the  art  treasures  of  the  hospital  is  the  staircase 
painted  by  Hogarth. 

If  an  hospital  could  speak  it  could  tell  strange  tales 
— of  misery  slowly  wrought,  ambition  foiled,  and  fair 
promise  ending  in  shame.  Many  a  toilworn  veteran 
has  entered  the  wards  of  St.  Bartholomew's  to  die 
in  the  very  couch  by  the  side  of  which  in  his  youth  he 
daily  passed— a   careless   student,    joyous  with  the 


A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  469 

spring  of  life,  and  little  thinking  of  the  storm  and 
unkind  winds  rising  up  behind  the  smiles  of  the  near- 
er future.  Scholars  of  gentle  birth,  brave  soldiers 
of  proud  lineage,  patient  women  whose  girlhood,  spent 
in  luxury  and  refinement,  has  been  followed  by 
penury,  evil  entreatment,  and  destitution,  find  their 
way  to  our  hospitals— to  pass  from  a  world  of  grief 
to  one  where  sorrow  is  not.  It  is  not  once  in  awhile, 
but  daily,  that  a  physician  of  any  large  charitable 
institution  of  London  reads  a  pathetic  tale  of  strug- 
gle and  defeat,  of  honest  effort  and  bitter  failure, 
of  slow  descent  from  grade  to  grade  of  misfortune— 
in  the  tranquil  dignity,  the  mild  enduring  quiet,  and 
noiseless  gratitude  of  poor  sufferers— gentle  once  in 
fortune,  gentle  still  in  nature.  One  hears  unpleasant 
stories  of  medical  students,  their  gross  dissipations 
and  coarse  manners.  Possibly  these  stories  have  their 
foundation  in  fact,  but  at  best  thej'  are  broad  and 
unjust  caricatures.  This  writer  in  his  youth  lived 
much  amongst  the  students  of  our  hospitals,  as  he  did 
also  amongst  those  of  our  old  universities,  and  he 
found  them  simple  and  manly  in  their  lives,  zealous 
in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge,  animated  by  a  profes- 
sional esprit  of  the  best  sort,  earnestly  believing  in 
the  dignity  of  their  calling,  and  characterised  by  a 
singular  ever-lively  compassion  for  all  classes  of  the 
desolate  and  distressed.  And  this  quality  of  mercv, 
which  unquestionably  adorns  in  an  eminent  degree 
the  youth  of  our  medical  schools,  he  has  always  re- 
garded as  a  happy  consequence  of  their  education, 
making  them  acquainted,  in  the  most  practical  and 
affecting  manner,  with  the  sad  vicissitudes  of  human 
existence. 


470  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

Guy's  hospital  was  the  benevolent  work  of  a  Lon- 
don bookseller,  who,  by  perseverance,  economy,  and 
lucky  speculation,  amassed  a  very  large  fortune. 
Thomas  Guy  began  life  with  a  stock  of  about  £200, 
as  a  stationery  and  bookseller  in  a  little  corner  house 
between  Cornhill  and  Lombard-st.,  taking  out  his 
freedom  of  the  Stationers'  Company  in  1668.  He  was 
a  thrifty  tradesman,  but  he  won  his  wealth  rather 
by  stock-jobbing  than  by  the  sale  of  books,  although 
he  made  important  sums  by  his  contract  with  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oxford  for  their  privilege  of  printing  bi- 
bles. Maitland  informs  us,  "England  being  engaged 
in  an  expensive  war  against  Prance,  the  poor  seamen 
on  board  the  royal  navy,  for  many  years,  instead  of 
money  received  tickets  for  their  pay,  which  those  ne- 
cessitous but  very  useful  men  were  obliged  to  dispose 
of  at  thirty,  forty,  and  sometimes  fifty  in  the  hun- 
dred discount.  Mr.  Guy,  discovering  the  sweets  of  this 
traffick,  became  an  early  dealer  therein,  as  well  as  in 
other  government  securities,  by  which,  and  his  trade, 
he  acquired  a  very  great  estate."  In  the  South-sea 
stock  he  was  not  less  lucky.  He  bought  largely  at  the 
outset,  held  on  till  the  bubble  reached  its  full  size, 
and  ere  the  final  burst  sold  out.  It  may  be  ques- 
tioned whether  Guy's  or  Rahere's  money  was  earned 
the  more  honourably, — whether  to  fawn,  flatter,  and 
jest  at  the  table  of  princes  was  a  meaner  course  of  ex- 
ertion than  to  drive  a  usurious  trade  with  poor  sail- 
ors, and  fatten  on  a  stupendous  national  calamity. 
But  however  basely  it  may  have  been  gathered  to- 
gether, Guy's  wealth  was  well  expended,  in  alleviat- 
ing the  miseries  of  the  same  classes  from  whose  suf- 
ferings it  had  been  principally  extracted.    In  his  old 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  471 

age  Guy  set  about  building  his  hospital,  and  ere  his 
death,  in  1724,  saw  it  completed.  On  its  erection 
and  endowment  he  expended  £238,292  16s.  5d.  To 
his  honour  it  must  be  stated  that,  notwithstanding 
this  expenditure  and  his  munificent  contributions  to 
other  charities,  he  had  a  considerable  residue  of 
property,  which  he  distributed  amongst  his  poor  re- 
lations. 

Of  the  collegiate  medical  buildings  of  London,  the 
one  that  belongs  to  the  humblest  department  of  the 
profession  is  the  oldest,  and  for  that  reason— apart 
from  its  contents,  which  are  comparatively  of  little 
value— the  most  interesting.  Apothecaries'  Hall,  in 
Water  Lane,  Blackfriars,  was  built  in  1670.  Possibly 
the  size  and  imposing  aspect  of  their  college  stimu- 
lated the  drug-vendors  to  new  encroachments  on  the 
prescriptive  and  enacted  rights  of  the  physicians. 
The  rancour  of  "The  Dispensary"  passes  over  the 
merits  (graces  it  has  none)  of  the  structure,  and  des- 
ignates it  by  mentioning  its  locality — 

"Nigh  where  Fleet  Ditch  descends  in  sable  streams, 
To  wash  his  sooty  Naiads  in  the  Thames, 
There  stands  a  structure  on  a  rising  hill, 
Where  tyros  take  their  freedom  out  to  kill." 

Amongst  the  art-treasures  of  the  hall  are  a  portrait 
of  James  I.  (who  first  established  the  apothecaries 
as  a  company  distinct  from  the  grocers),  and  a  bust 
of  Delaune,  the  lucky  apothecary  of  that  monarch's 
queen,  who  has  already  been  mentioned  in  these 
pages. 

The  elegant  college  of  the  physicians,  in  Pall  Mall 
east,  was  not  taken  int«  use  till  the  25th  of  June,  1825, 
the  doctors  migrating  to  it  from  Warwick  Hall,  which 
is  now  in  the  occupation  of  the  butchers  of  Newgate 


472  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

Market.  Had  the  predecessors  of  the  present  tenants 
been  "the  surgeons,"  instead  of  "the  physicians," 
the  change  of  masters  would  have  given  occasion  for 
a  joke.  As  it  is,  not  even  the  consolation  of  a  jest  can 
be  extracted  from  the  desecration  of  an  abode  of 
learning  that  has  many  claims  on  our  affection. 

In  "The  Dispensary,"  the  proximity  of  the  col- 
lege dome  to  the  Old  Bailey  is  playfully  pointed 
at:— 

"Not  far  from  that  most  celebrated  place, 
Where  angry  justice  shows  her  awful  face, 
Where  little  villains  must  submit  to  fate. 
That  great  ones  may  enjoy  the  world  in  state, 
There  stands  a  dome,  majestic  to  the  sight, 
And  sumptuous  arches  bear  its  oval  height; 
A  golden  globe,  placed  high  with  artful  skill. 
Seems,  to  the  distant  sight,  a  gilded  pill : 
This  pile  was,  by  the  pious  patron's  aim. 
Raised  for  a  use  as  noble  as  its  frame. 
Nor  did  the  learn'd  society  decline 
The  propagation  of  that  great  design ; 
In  all  her  mazes.  Nature's  face  they  view'd. 
And,  as  she  disappear'd,  their  search  pursued. 
Wrapt  in  the  shade  of  night,  the  goddess  lies. 
Yet  to  the  learn'd  unveils  her  dark  disguise, 
But  shuns  the  gross  access  of  vulgar  eyes." 

The  Warwick  Lane  college  was  erected  on  the  col- 
lege at  Amen  Corner  (to  which  the  physicians  re- 
moved on  quitting  their  original  abode  in  Knight- 
Rider  Street),  being  burnt  to  the  ground  in  the  great 
fire  of  1666.  Charles  II.  and  Sir  John  Cutler  were 
ambitious  of  having  their  names  associated  with  the 
new  edifice,  the  chief  fault  of  which  was  that,  like 
all  the  other  restorations  following  the  memorable 
conflagration,  it  was  raised  near  the  old  site.  Charles 
became  its  pious  patron,  and  Sir  John  Cutler  its 
munificent  benefactor.  The  physicians  duly  thanked 
them,  and  honoured  them  with  statues.  Cutler's  efiigy 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  473 

having  inscribed  beneath  it,  ' '  Oninis  Cutleri  cedat  la- 
bor Amphitheatre." 

So  far,  so  good.  The  fun  of  the  affair  remains  to 
be  told.  On  Sir  John's  death,  his  executors,  Lord 
Radnor  and  Mr.  Boulter,  demanded  of  the  college 
£7000,  which  covered  in  amount  a  sum  the  college 
had  borrowed  of  their  deceased  benefactor,  and  also 
the  sum  he  pretended  to  have  given.  Eventually  the 
executors  lowered  their  claim  to  £2000  (which,  it  is 
reasonable  to  presume,  had  been  lent  by  Sir  John), 
and  discontinued  their  demand  for  the  £5000  given. 
Such  being  the  stuff  of  which  Sir  John  was  made,  well 
might  Pope  exclaim:  — 

"His  Grace's  fate  sage  Cutler  could  foresee, 
And  well   (he  thought)  advised  him,  'Live  like  me.' 
As  well  his  Grace  replied,  'Like  you.  Sir  John? 
That  I  can  do  when  all  I  have  is  gone.' " 

In  consideration  of  the  £5000  retained  of  the  nig- 
gard's money,  the  physicians  allowed  his  statue  to 
remain,  but  they  erased  the  inscription  from  beneath 
it. 

The  Royal  College  of  Surgeons  m  London  was 
not  incorporated  till  the  year  1800— more  than  half 
a  century  after  the  final  disruption  of  the  surgeons 
from  the  barbers— and  the  college  in  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields  was  not  erected  till  1835.  Its  noble  museum, 
based  on  the  Hunterian  Collection,  which  the  nation 
purchased  for  £15,000,  contains,  amongst  its  treas- 
ures, a  few  preparations  that  are  valuable  for  their 
historical  associations  or  sheer  eccentricity,  rather 
tlian  for  any  worth  from  a  strictly  scientific  point 
of  view.  Amongst  them  are  Martin  Van  Buchell's 
first  wife,  whose  embalmment  by  William  Hunter  has 
already  been  mentioned ;  the  intestines  of  Napoleon, 


474  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

showing  the  progress  of  the  disease  which  was  even- 
tually fatal  to  him;  and  the  fore-arms  (preserved  in 
spirits)  of  Thomas  Beaufort,  third  son  of  John  of 
Gaunt,  Duke  of  Lancaster. 

The  writer  had  recently  submitted  to  his  notice, 
by  Dr.  Diamond  of  Twickenham,  a  very  interesting 
and  beautifully  penned  manuscript,  relating  to  these 
remains,  of  which  the  following  is  a  copy:— 

"Bury  St  Edmunds. 
"Joseph  Pater  scripsit,  when  thirteen  years  of  age. 

"On  the  20th  of  February,  1772,  some  labourers, 
employed  in  breaking  up  part  of  the  old  abbey 
church,  discovered  a  leaden  coffin,  which  contained 
an  embalmed  body,  as  perfect  and  entire  as  at  the 
time  of  its  death;  the  features  and  lineaments  of  the 
face  were  perfect,  which  were  covered  with  a  mask  of 
emblaming  materials.  The  very  colour  of  the  eyes 
distinguishable;  the  hairs  of  the  head  a  brown,  in- 
termixed with  some  few  gray  ones;  the  nails  fast 
upon  the  fingers  and  toes  as  when  living;  stature 
of  the  body  about  six  feet  tall,  and  genteelly  form- 
ed. The  labourers,  for  the  sake  of  the  lead  (which 
they  sold  to  Mr  Faye,  a  plummer,  in  this  town,  for 
about  15s),  stript  the  body  of  its  coffin,  and  threw  it 
promiscuously  amongst  the  rubbish.  From  the  place 
of  its  interment  it  was  soon  found  to  be  the  remains 
of  Thomas  Beaufort,  third  son  of  John  de  Gaunt, 
Duke  of  Lancaster,  by  his  third  duchess.  Lady  Cath- 
erine Swineford,  relict  of  Sir  Otho  de  Swineford, 
of  Lincolnshire.  He  took  the  name  of  Beaufort  from 
the  place  of  his  birth,  a  castle  of  the  duke's,  in 
France.  He  was  half-brother  to  King  Henry  IV., 
created  Duke  of  Exeter  and  Knight  of  the  Garter; 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  475 

in  1410,  Lord  Chancellor  of  England ;  in  1412,  High 
Admiral  of  England,  and  Captain  of  Calais;  he  com- 
manded the  Rear-Guard  of  his  nephew  King  Henry 
the  Fifth's  army  at  the  battle  of  Agincourt,  on  the 
25th  of  October,  1415 ;  and  in  1422,  upon  the  death  of 
King  Henry  the  Fifth,  was  jointly  with  his  brother, 
Henry,  Cardinal  Bishop  of  Winchester,  appointed  by 
the  Parliament  to  the  government,  care,  and  education 
of  the  royal  infant,  Henry  the  Sixth.  He  married 
Margaret,  daughter  of  Sir  Thomas  Nevil,  by  whom  he 
had  issue  only  one  son,  who  died  young.  He  was  a 
great  benefactor  to  this  church,  died  at  East  Green- 
wich, 1427,  in  the  5th  year  of  King  Henry  ye  Sixth, 
and  was  interred  in  this  Abbey,  near  his  duchess  (as 
he  had  by  his  will  directed),  at  the  entrance  of  the 
Chapel  of  our  Lady,  close  to  the  wall.  On  the  24th  of 
February  following,  the  mangled  remains  were  en- 
closed in  an  oak  coffin,  and  buried  about  eight  feet 
deep,  close  to  the  north  side  of  the  north-east  pillar, 
which  formerly  assisted  to  support  the  Abbey  bel- 
fry. Before  its  re-interment,  the  body  was  mangled 
and  cut  with  the  most  savage  barbarity  by  Thomas 
Gery  Cullum,  a  young  surgeon  in  this  town,  lately 
appointed  Bath  King-at-Arms.  The  skull  sawed  in 
pieces,  where  the  brain  appeared  it  seemed  somewhat 
■wasted,  but  perfectly  contained  in  its  proper  mem- 
branes; the  body  ript  open  from  the  neck  to  the  bot- 
tom, the  cheek  cut  through  by  a  saw  entering  at  the 
mouth;  his  arms  chopped  off  below  the  elbows  and 
taken  away.  One  of  the  r.rms  the  said  Cullum  con- 
fesses to  have  in  spirits.  The  crucifix,  supposed  to  be 
a  very  valuable  one,  is  missing.  It  is  believed  the 
body  of  the  duchess  was  found  (within  about  a  foot 


476  A    BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

of  the  Duke's)  on  the  24th  of  February.  If  she  was 
buried  in  lead  she  was  most  likely  conveyed  away 
clandestinely  the  same  night.  In  this  church  several 
more  of  the  antient  royal  blood  were  interred,  whose 
remains  are  daily  expected  to  share  the  same  fate. 
Every  sensible  and  humane  mind  reflects  with  horror 
at  the  shocking  and  wanton  inhumanity  with  which 
the  princely  remains  of  the  grandson  of  the  victorious 
King  Edward  the  Third  have  been  treated— worse 
than  the  body  of  a  common  malefactor,  and  345  years 
after  his  death.  The  truth  of  this  paragraph  having 
been  artfully  suppressed,  or  very  falsely  represented 
in  the  county  newspapers,  and  the  conveyance  of  pub- 
lic intelligence  rendered  doubtful,  no  method  could 
be  taken  to  convey  a  true  account  to  the  public  but  by 
this  mode  of  offering  it." 

The  young  surgeon  whose  conduct  is  here  so  warm- 
ly censured  was  the  younger  son  of  a  Suffolk  baronet. 
On  the  death  of  his  brother  he  succeeded  to  the  family 
estate  and  honours,  and  having  no  longer  any  necessi- 
ty to  exert  himself  to  earn  money,  relinquished  med- 
ical practice.  He  was  born  in  1741  and  died  in  1831. 
It  is  from  him  that  the  present  baronet,  of  Hawstead 
Place  and  Hardwicke  House,  in  the  county  of  Suffolk, 
is  descended. 

The  fore-arms,  now  in  the  custody  of  the  College  of 
Surgeons,  were  for  a  time  separated.  One  of  them 
was  retained  by  Mr.  Cullum,  and  the  other,  becom- 
ing the  property  of  some  mute  inglorious  Barnum, 
was  taken  about  to  all  the  fairs  and  wakes  of  the  coun- 
ty, and  exhibited  as  a  raree-show  at  a  penny  a  peep. 
The  vagrant  member,  however,   came  back  after  a 


A    BOOK    ABOUT    DOCTORS.  477 

while  to  Mr.  Cullum,  and  he  presented  both  of  the  mu- 
tilated pertions  to  their  present  possessors. 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

THE    COUNTRY   MEDICAL   MAN. 

The  country  doctor,  such  as  we  know  him— a  well- 
read  and  observant  man,  skilful  in  his  art,  with  a  lib- 
eral love  of  science,  and  in  every  respect  a  gentleman 
—is  so  recent  a  creation,  that  he  may  almost  be 
spoken  of  as  a  production  of  the  present  century. 
There  still  linger  in  the  provinces  veteran  represent- 
atives of  the  ignorance  which,  in  the  middle  of  the 
last  century,  was  the  prevailing  characteristic  of  the 
rural  apothecary.  Even  as  late  as  1816,  the  law  re- 
quired no  medical  education  in  a  practitioner  of  the 
healing  art  in  country  districts,  beyond  an  appren- 
ticeship to  an  empiric,  who  frequently  had  not  iu- 
formation  of  any  kind,  beyond  the  rudest  elements 
of  a  druggist's  learning,  to  impart  to  his  pupils. 
Men  who  commenced  business  under  this  system  are 
still  to  be  found  in  every  English  county,  though  in 
most  cases  they  endeavour  to  conceal  their  lack  of 
scientific  culture  under  German  or  Scotch  diplomas- 
bought  for  a  few  pounds. 

Scattered  over  these  pages  are  many  anecdotes  of 
provincial  doctors  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 


A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS.  479 

centuries,  from  which  a  truthful  but  not  complimen- 
tary picture  of  their  order  may  be  obtained.  Indeed, 
they  were  for  the  most  part  vulgar  drunken  knaves, 
with  just  learning  enough  to  impose  on  the  foolish 
crowds  who  resorted  to  them.  The  most  brilliant  of 
the  fraternity  in  Henry  the  Eighth's  reign  was  An- 
drew Borde,  a  Winchester  practitioner.  This  gentle- 
man was  author  and  buffoon,  as  well  as  physician. 
He  travelled  about  the  country  from  market  to  fair, 
and  from  fair  to  market,  making  comic  orations  to 
the  crowds  who  purchased  his  nostrums,  singing  songs, 
and  enlivening  the  proceedings  when  they  were  be- 
coming dull  with  grimaces  of  inexpressible  drollery. 
It  was  said  of  Sir  John  Hill, 

"For  physic  and  farces 

His  equal  there  scarce  is; 
His  farces  are  physic. 
His  physic  a  farce  is." 

Borde 's  physic  doubtless  was  a  farce;  but  if  his 
wit  resembled  physic,  it  did  so,  not  (like  Hill's)  by 
making  men  sick,  but  by  rousing  their  spirits  and 
bracing  their  nerves  with  good  hearty  laughter.  Eve- 
rywhere he  was  known  as  "Merry  Andrew,"  and  his 
followers,  when  they  mounted  the  bank,  were  proud 
to  receive  the  same  title. 

Mr.  H.  Fleetwood  Sheppard  communicated  in  the 
year  1855,  some  amusing  anecdotes  to  "Notes  and 
Queries"  about  the  popular  Dorsetshire  doctor— little 
Dr.  Grey.  Small  but  warlike,  this  gentleman,  in  the 
reign  of  James  the  First,  had  a  following  of  well- 
born roisterers  that  enabled  him  to  beard  the  High 
Sheriff  at  the  assizes.  He  was  always  in  debt,  but 
as  he  always  carried  a  brandy-flask  and  a  brace  of 
loaded  pistols  in  his  pocket  or  about  his  neck,  he  neith- 


480  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

er  experienced  the  mental  harass  of  impecuniosity 
nor  feared  bailififs.  In  the  hour  of  peril  he  blew  a 
horn,  which  he  wore  suspended  to  his  person,  and  the 
gentlemen  of  his  body-guard  rallied  round  him,  vow- 
ing they  were  his  "sons,"  and  would  die  for  him. 
Says  the  MS.— "This  Doctor  Grey  was  once  arreste 
by  a  pedler,  who  coming  to  his  house  knocked  at  ye 
dore  as  yey  (he  being  desirous  of  Hobedyes)  useth 
to  doe,  and  ye  pedler  having  gartars  upon  his  armes, 
and  points,  &c.,  asked  him  whether  he  did  wante  any 
points  or  gartars,  &c.,  pedler  like.  Grey  hereat  be- 
gan to  storme,  and  ye  other  tooke  him  by  ye  arme,  and 
told  him  that  he  had  no  neede  be  so  angry,  and 
holdinge  him  fast,  told  him  y  he  had  ye  kinge's  proces 
for  him,  and  showed  him  his  warrant.  'Hast  thou?' 
quoth  Grey,  and  stoode  stil  awhile;  but  at  length, 
catchinge  ye  fellowe  by  both  ends  of  his  collar  before, 
held  him  fast,  and  drawinge  out  a  great  rundagger, 
brake  his  head  in  two  or  three  places." 

Again, Dr.  Grey  "came  one  day  at  ye  assizes,  wheare 
ye  sheriffe  had  some  sixty  men,  and  he  wth  his  twen- 
ty sonnes,  ye  trustyest  young  gentlemen  and  of  ye  best 
sort  and  rancke,  came  and  drancke  in  Dorchester  be- 
fore ye  sheriffe,  and  bad  who  dare  to  touch  him;  and 
so  after  awhile  blew  his  horn  and  came  away."  On 
the  same  terms  who  would  not  like  to  be  a  Dorsetshire 
physician? 

In  1569  {vide  "Roberts'  History  of  the  Southern 
Counties")  Lyme  had  no  medical  practitioner.  And 
at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  Sir  Sy- 
monds  D  'Ewes  was  brought  into  the  world  at  Coxden 
Hall,  near  Axminster,  by  a  female  practitioner,  who 
deformed  him  for  life  by  her  clumsiness.    Yet  more, 


A  BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS.  481 

Mrs.  D'Ewes  set  out  with  her  infant  for  London,  when 
the  babe,  unable  to  bear  the  jolting  of  the  carriage, 
screamed  itself  into  a  violent  illness,  and  had  to 
be  left  behind  at  Dorchester  under  the  care  of  another 
doctress — Mrs.  Margaret  Waltham.  And  two  genera- 
tions later,  in  1665,  the  Rev.  Giles  Moore,  of  Essex, 
had  to  send  twenty-five  miles  for  an  ordinary  medical 
man,  who  was  paid  12s.  per  visit,  and  the  same  dis- 
tance for  a  physician,  whose  fee  was  £1— a  second 
physician,  who  came  and  stayed  two  days,  being  paid 
£1  10s. 

Of  the  country  doctors  of  the  middle  and  close  of 
the  last  century,  Dr.  Slop  is  a  fair  specimen.  They 
were  a  rude,  vulgar,  keen-witted  set  of  men,  possess- 
ing much  the  same  sort  of  intelligence,  and  disfigured 
by  the  same  kind  of  ignorance,  as  a  country  gentleman 
expects  now  to  find  in  his  farrier.  They  had  to  do 
battle  with  the  village  nurses  at  the  best  on  equal 
terms,  often  at  a  disadvantage ;  masculine  dignity  and 
superior  medical  erudition  being  in  many  districts 
of  less  account  than  the  force  of  old  usage,  and  the 
sense  of  decorum  that  supported  the  lady  practition- 
ers. Mrs.  Shandy  had  an  express  provision  in  her 
marriage  settlement,  securing  her  from  the  ignorance 
of  country  doctors.  Of  course,  in  respect  to  learn- 
ing and  personal  acquirements,  the  rural  practition- 
ers, as  a  class,  varied  very  much,  in  accordance  with 
the  intelligence  and  culture  of  the  district  in  which 
their  days  were  spent,  with  the  class  and  character 
of  their  patients,  and  with  their  own  connections  and 
original  social  condition.  On  his  Yorkshire  living 
Sterne  came  in  contact  \rith  a  rought  lot.  The  "Whit- 
worili  Taylors  were  captains  and  leaders  of  the  army 


482  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

in  which  Dr.  Slop  was  a  private.  The  original  of 
the  last-mentioned  woi'thy  was  so  ill-read  that  he 
mistook  Lithopivdii  Senonensis  Icon  for  the  name 
of  a  distinguished  surgical  authority,  and,  under  this 
erroneous  impression,  quoted  Lithopaedus  Senonensis 
with  the  extreme  of  gravity. 

This  Lithopa'dus  Senonensis  story  is  not  without 
its  companions.  A  prescription,  in  which  a  physi- 
cian ordered  extract,  rad  valer.,  and  immediately 
under  it,  as  an  ingredient  in  the  same  mixture,  a 
certain  quantity  of  tinctura  cjusdem,  sorely  per- 
plexed the  poor  apothecary  to  who  it  was  sent  to  be 
dispensed.  Tinctura  ejusdem!  AVhat  could  it  be? 
Ejusdeni!  In  the  whole  pharmacopcEia  such  a  drug 
was  not  named.  Nothing  like  it  was  to  be  found  on 
any  label  in  his  shop.  At  his  wits'  end,  the  poor  fel- 
low went  out  to  a  professional  neighbour,  and  asked, 
in  an  off-hand  way,  "How  are  you  off  for  Tinctura 
Ejusdem?  I  am  out  of  it.  So  can  you  let  me  have 
a  little  of  yours."  The  neighbour,  who  was  a  suf- 
ficiently good  classical  scholar  to  have  idem,  eadem, 
idem  at  his  tongue's  end,  lamented  that  he  too  was 
"out  of  the  article,"  and  sympathizingly  advised  his 
confrere,  without  loss  of  time,  to  apply  for  some  at 
Apothecaries'  Hall.  What  a  delightful  blunder  to 
make  to  a  friend,  of  all  the  people  in  the  world !  The 
apothecary  must  have  been  a  dull  as  well  as  an  un- 
lettered fellow,  or  he  would  have  known  the  first  great 
rule  of  his  art — "When  in  doubt— I7se  water!"  A 
more  awkward  mistake  still  was  that  made  by  the 
young  dispenser,  who,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life, 
saw  at  the  end  of  a  prescription  the  words  pro  re 
nata.     What  could  they  mean?  pro  re  natal    What 


A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS.  483 

could  pro  re  natd  have  to  do  wnth  a  mixture  sent  to 
a  lady  who  had  just  presented  her  husband  with  an 
heir.  With  the  aid  of  a  Latin  Dictionary,  the  novice 
rendered  pro  re  natd  "for  the  thing  born."  Of 
course.  Clearly  the  mixture  was  for  the  baby.  And 
in  c.  trice  the  compound  to  be  taken  by  an  adult,  as 
circumstances  should  indicate  a  necessity  for  a  dose, 
was  sent  off  for  the  "little  stranger." 

May  not  mention  here  be  made  of  thee,  ancient 
friend  of  childhood,  Roland  Trevor  ?  The  whole  coun- 
try round,  for  a  circle  of  which  the  diameter  meas- 
ured thirty  fair  miles,  thou  wert  one  of  the  most  pop- 
ular doctors  of  East  Anglia.  Who  rode  better  horses  ? 
Who  was  the  bolder  in  the  hunt,  or  more  joyous 
over  the  bottle?  Cheery  of  voice,  with  hearty  laugh- 
ter rolling  from  purple  lips,  what  company  thou  wert 
to  festive  squires !  The  grave  some  score  years  since 
closed  over  thee,  when  ninety-six  years  had  passed 
over  thy  head— covering  it  with  silver  tresses,  and 
robbing  the  eye  of  its  pristine  fire,  and  the  lip  of  its 
mirthful  curl.  The  shop  of  a  country  apothecary 
had  been  thy  only  Alma  Mater;  so,  surely,  it  was  no 
fault  of  thine  if  thy  learning  was  scanty.  Still,  in 
the  pleasant  vales  of  Loes  and  Wilford  is  told  the 
story  of  how,  on  being  asked  if  thou  wert  a  believer  in 
phrenology,  thou  didst  answer  with  becoming  gravity, 
"I  never  keep  it,  and  I  never  use  it.  But  I  think  it 
highly  probable  that,  given  frequently  and  in  liberal 
doses,  it  would  be  very  useful  in  certain  cases  of  ir- 
regular gout." 

Another  memory  arises  of  a  country  doctor  of  the 
old  school.  A  huge,  burly,  surly,  churlish  old  fellow 
was  Dr.  Standish.     He  died  in  extremely  advanced 


484  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTOKS. 

age,  having  lived  twenty-five  years  in  the  present 
century.  A  ferocious  radical,  he  was  an  object  of  con- 
siderable public  interest  during  the  period  of  political 
excitement  consequent  on  the  French  Revolution. 
Tom  Paine,  the  Thetford  breeches-maker  of  whom  the 
world  has  heard  a  little,  was  his  familiar  friend 
and  correspondent.  It  was  rumoured  throughout  the 
land  that  "govei'nment"  had  marked  the  doctor  out 
for  destruction. 

"Thar  sai,"  tlie  humbler  Suffolk  farmers  used  to 
gossip  amongst  themselves,  "thar  sai  a  pieter-taikin 
chap  hav  guv  his  poortright  to  the  King.  And  Billy 
Pitt  ha 'sin  it.  And  oold  King  Georgic  lia'  swaren  as 
how  that  sooner  nor  later  he'll  hav  his  hid"  {i.  e. 
head). 

The  "upper  ten"  of  Holmnook,  and  the  upper  ten- 
times-ten  of  the  distance  round  about  Plolmnook, 
held  themselves  aloof  from  such  a  dangerous  charac- 
ter. But  the  common  folk  believed  in  and  admired 
him.  There  was  somethin<T  of  romance  about  a  man 
whom  George  III.  and  Billy  Pitt  were  banded  together 
to  destroy. 

Standish  was  a  man  of  few  words.  "Down  with 
the  bishops!"  "Up  with  the  people!"  were  his  stock 
sentiments.  He  never  approached  nearer  poetry  than 
when  (yellow  being  then  the  colour  of  the  extreme 
liberal  party  in  his  district)  he  swore  "there  worn't 
a  flower  in  the  who'  o'  crashun  warth  lookin'  at  but 
a  sunflower,  for  that  was  yallow,  and  a  big  un. ' ' 

The  man  had  no  friends  in  Holmnook  or  the  neigh- 
bourhood ;  but  every  evening  for  fifty  years  he  sate, 
in  the  parlour  of  the  chief  inn,  drinking  brandy-and- 
water,  and  smoking  a  "churchwarden."    His  wife— 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  485 

(his  wooing  must  have  been  of  a  queer  sort)  —a  quiet, 
inoflfensive  little  body,  sometimes  forgot  she  was  but 
a  woman,  and  presumed  to  have  an  opinion  of  her 
own.  On  such  occasions  Standish  thrashed  her 
soundly  with  a  dog-whip.  In  consequence  of  one  of 
these  castigations  she  ran  away  from  her  tyrant. 
Instead  of  pursuing  her.  Dr.  Standish  merely  in- 
serted the  following  advertisement  in  the  county  pa- 
per:— 

"Dr  Standish  to  all  whom  it  may  concern.— Dr 
Standish 's  wife  having  run  away,  he  wants  a  house- 
keeper. Dr  Standish  doesn't  want  good  looks  in  a 
woman :  but  she  must  know  how  to  hold  her  tongue 
and  cook  a  plain  joint.  He  gives  ten  pounds.  Mrs 
Standish  needn't  apply— she's  too  much  of  a  lady." 

But  poor  Mrs.  Standish  did  apply,  and,  what  is 
more,  obtained  the  situation.  She  and  her  lord  never 
again  had  any  quarrel  that  obtained  publicity;  and 
so  the  affair  ended  more  happily  than  in  all  proba- 
bility it  would  have  done  had  Sir  Creswell  Creswell's 
court  been  then  in  existence.  Standish 's  practice  lay 
principally  amongst  the  mechanics  and  little  farmers 
of  the  neighborhood.  j\Iuch  of  his  time  was  there- 
fore spent  in  riding  his  two  huge  lumbering  horses 
about  the  country.  In  his  old  age  he  indulged  him- 
self in  a  gig  (which,  out  of  respect  to  radical  politics, 
he  painted  with  a  flaring  yellow  paint) ;  but,  at  the 
commencement  of  the  present  century,  the  by-roads 
of  Suffolk— now  so  good  that  a  London  brougham 
drawn  by  one  horse  ean  with  ease  whisk  over  the  worst 
of  them  at  the  rate  of  ten  miles  an  hour— were  so 
bad  that  a  doctor  could  not  make  an  ordinary  round 
on  them  in  a  wheeled  carriage.     Even  in  the  sad- 


486  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTOKS. 

die  he  ran  frequent  risk  of  being  mired,  unless  his 
horse  had  an  abundance  of  bone  and  pluck. 

Standish's  mode  of  riding  was  characteristic  of  the 
man.  Straight  on  he  went,  at  a  lumbering  six  miles 
an  hour  trot— dash,  dosh,  dush !— through  the  mud- 
dy roads,  sitting  loosely  in  his  seat,  heavy  and  shape- 
less as  a  sack  of  potatoes,  looking  down  at  his  brown 
corduroy  breeches  and  his  mahogany  top-boots  (the 
toes  of  which  pointed  in  directly  opposite  direc- 
tions), wearing  a  pei-pctual  scowl  on  his  brows,  and 
never  either  rising  in  his  stirrups  or  fixing  himself 
to  the  saddle  with  his  knees.  Not  a  word  would 
he  speak  to  a  living  creature  in  the  way  of  civil 
greeting. 

"Doctor,  good  morning  to  you,"  an  acquaintance 
would  cry  out;  "  'tis  a  nice  day!" 

"Ugh!"  Standish  would  half  grunt,  half  roar, 
trotting  straight  on— disli,  dosh,  dush! 

"Stop,  doctor,  I  am  out  of  sorts,  and  want  some 
physic,"  would  be  the  second  form  of  address. 

"Then  why  the didn't  you  say  so,  instead 

of  jawing  about  the  weather?"  the  urbane  phy- 
sician would  say,  checking  his  horse. 

Standish  never  turned  out  an  inch  for  any  way- 
farer. SuUen  and  overbearing,  he  rode  straight  on 
upon  one  side  of  the  road ;  and,  however  narrow  the 
way  might  be,  he  never  swerved  a  barley-corn  from 
his  line  for  horse  or  rider,  cart  or  carriage.  Our 
dear  friend  Charley  Halifax  gave  him  a  smart  lesson 
in  good  manners  on  this  point.  Charley  had  brought 
a  well-bred  hackney,  and  a  large  fund  of  animal  spir- 
its, down  from  Cambridge  to  a  title  for  orders  in 
mid-Suffolk.     He  had  met  Standish  in  the  cottages 


A   BOOK    ABOUT   DOCTORS.  487 

of  some  of  his  flock,  aud  afterwards  meeting  else- 
where, had  greeted  him,  and  had  no  greeting  in  re- 
turn. It  was  not  long  ere  Charley  learnt  all  about 
the  clownish  apothecary,  and  speedily  did  he  devise 
a  scheme  for  humbling  him.  The  next  time  he  saw 
Standish  in  the  distance,  trotting  on  towards  him, 
Charley  put  his  heels  to  his  horse,  and  charged  the 
man  of  drugs  at  full  gallop.  Standish  came  lumber- 
ing on,  disdaining  to  look  before  him  and  ascertain 
who  was  clattering  along  at  such  a  pace.  On  arriv- 
ing within  six  feet  of  Standish 's  horse,  Halifax  fell 
back  on  his  curb-rein,  and  pulled  up  sharp.  Aston- 
ished, but  more  sensible  than  his  master,  Standish 's 
horse  (as  Charley  knew  would  be  the  case)  suddenly 
came  to  a  dead  stop,  on  which  Standish  rolled  over 
its  head  into  the  muddy  highway.  As  he  rolled  over, 
he  threw  out  a  volley  of  oaths.  "Ah,  doctor,"  cried 
Charley,  good-humoredly,  ' '  I  said  I  would  make  you 
speak  to  me."  Standish  was  six  feet  high,  and  a  pow- 
erful man.  For  a  few  moments,  on  recovering  his 
legs,  he  looked  as  if  he  contemplated  an  assault  on  the 
young  parson.  But  he  thought  better  of  it;  and, 
climbing  into  his  seat  once  more,  trotted  on,  without 
another  word— dish,  dosh,  dush!  The  incident  didn't 
tend  to  soften  his  feelings  toward  the  Established 
Church. 

The  country  doctor  of  the  last  century  always  went 
his  rounds  on  horseback  booted  and  spurred.  The 
state  of  the  roads  rendered  any  other  mode  of  trav- 
elling impracticable  to  men  who  had  not  only  to  use 
the  highways  and  coach-roads,  but  to  make  their  way 
up  bridle-paths,  and  drifts,  and  lanes,  to  secluded 
farmsteads  and  outlying  villages.     Even  as  late  as 


488  A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

the  last  generation,  in  Suffolk,  where  now  people 
drive  to  and  fro  at  the  rate  of  twelve  miles  an  hour, 
a  doctor  (whom  the  writer  of  these  pages  has  reason 
to  think  of  with  affection)  was  more  than  once  mired, 
on  a  slightly-built  blood  horse,  so  effectually,  that 
he  had  to  dismount  ere  the  animal  could  be  extri- 
cated; and  this  happened  in  roads  that  at  the  pres- 
ent time  are,  in  all  seasons,  firm  as  a  garden  walk. 

Describing  the  appearance  of  a  country  doctor  of 
this  period,  a  writer  observes— "  ^^'^len  first  I  saw 
him,  it  was  on  Frampton  Green.  I  was  somewhat 
his  junior  in  years,  and  had  heard  so  much  of  him 
that  I  had  no  small  curiosity  to  see  him.  He  was 
dressed  in  a  blue  coat  and  yellow  buttons,  buckskins, 
well-polished  jockey-boots,  with  handsome  silver 
spurs,  and  he  carried  a  smart  whip  with  a  silver 
handle.  His  hair,  after  the  fashion,  was  done  up  in 
a  club,  and  he  wore  a  broad-brimmed  hat."  Such  was 
the  appearance  of  Jenner,  as  he  galloped  across  the 
vale  of  Gloucester,  visiting  his  patients.  There  is 
little  to  remind  us  of  such  a  personage  as  this  in  the 
statue  in  Trafalgar  Square,  which  is  the  slowly-offered 
tribute  of  our  gratitude  to  Edward  Jenner  for  his  im- 
perishable services  to  mankind.  The  opposition  that 
Jenner  met  with  in  his  labours  to  free  our  species 
from  a  hideous  malady  that,  destroying  life  and  ob- 
literating beauty,  spared  neither  the  cottage  nor  the 
palace,  is  a  subject  on  which  it  is  painful  to  reflect. 
The  learned  of  his  own  profession  and  the  vulgar  of 
all  ranks  combined  to  persecute  and  insult  him;  and 
when  the  merit  of  his  inestimable  discovery  was  ac- 
knowledged by   all   intelligent  persons,   he   received 


A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS.  489 

from  his  country  a  remuneration  that  was  little  better 
than  total  neerlect. 

While  acting  as  an  apprentice  to  a  country  sur- 
geon he  first  conceived  the  possibility  of  checking 
the  ravages  of  small-pox.  A  young  servant  woman, 
who  accidentally  said  that  she  was  guarded  from  that 
disease  by  having  "had  cow-pox,"  first  apprized  him 
that  amongst  the  servants  of  a  rural  population  a  be- 
lief existed  that  the  virus  from  the  diseased  cow,  on 
being  absorbed  by  the  human  system,  was  a  pre- 
ventive against  small-pox.  From  that  time,  till  the 
ultimate  success  of  his  inquiries,  he  never  lost  sight 
of  the  subject. 

The  ridicule  and  misrepresentation  to  which  he 
was  subjected  are  at  this  date  more  pleasant  for  ua 
to  laugh  at  than,  at  the  time,  they  were  for  him  to 
bear.  The  ignorant  populace  of  London  was  instruct- 
ed that  people,  on  being  vaccinated,  ran  great  risks 
of  being  converted  into  uembers  of  the  bovine  fam- 
ily. The  appearance  of  hair  covering  the  whole  body, 
of  horns  and  a  tail,  followed  in  many  cases  the  op- 
eration. The  condition  of  an  unhappy  child  was  pa- 
thetically described,  who,  brutified  by  vaccine  ichor, 
persisted  in  running  on  all-fours  and  roaring  like  a 
bull.  Dr.  Woodville  and  Dr.  Moseley  opposed  Jenner, 
the  latter  with  a  violence  that  little  became  a  scien- 
tific inquirer.  Numerous  were  the  squibs  and  cari- 
catures the  controversy  called  forth.  Jenner  was 
represented  as  riding  on  a  cow— an  animal  certainly 
not  adapted  to  show  the  doctor  ("booted  and 
spurred"  as  we  have  just  seen  him)  off  to  the  best 
advantage.    Of  Moseley  the  comic  muse  sung: 


490  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

"Oh,  Moseley !  thy  book,  nightly  phantasies  rousing, 

Full  oft  makes  me  quake  for  my  heart's  dearest  treasure; 
For  fancv,  in  dreams,  oft  presents  them  all  browsing 

On  commons,  just  like  little  Nebuchadnezzar. 
There,  nibbling  at  thistle,  stand  Jem,  Joe,  and  Mary, 

On  their  foreheads,  O  horrible  !  crumpled  horns  bud  : 
There  Tom  with  his  tail,  and  poor  William  all  hairy, 

Reclined  in  a  corner,  are  chewing  the  cud." 

If  London  was  unjust  to  him,  the  wdseacres  of 
Gloucestershire  thought  that  burning  was  his  fit  pun- 
ishment. One  dear  old  lady,  whenever  she  saw  him 
leaving  his  house,  used  to  run  out  and  attack  him 
with  indescribable  vivacity.  "So  your  book,"  cried 
this  charming  matron,  in  genuine  Gloucestershire  dia- 
lect, "is  out  at  last.  Well!  I  can  tell  you  that  there 
bean't  a  copy  sold  in  our  town,  nor  shan't  neither, 
if  I  can  help  it."  On  hearing,  subsequent  to  the 
publication  of  the  book  (a  great  offence  to  the  old 
lady!),  some  rumours  of  vaccination  failures,  the 
same  goodie  bustled  up  to  the  doctor  and  cried,  with 
galling  irony,  "Shan't  us  have  a  general  inoculation 
now?" 

But  Jenner  was  compensated  for  this  worthy 
woman's  opposition  in  the  enthusiastic  support  of 
Rowland  Hill,  who  not  only  advocated  vaccination  in 
his  ordinary  conversation,  but  from  the  pulpit  used  to 
say,  after  his  sermon  to  his  congregation,  wherever  he 
preached,  "I  am  ready  to  vaccinate  to-morrow  morn- 
ing as  many  children  as  you  choose;  and  if  you  wish 
them  to  escape  that  horrid  disease,  the  small-pox,  you 
will  bring  them."  A  Vaccine  Board  was  also  estab- 
lished at  the  Surrey  Chapel— i.  e.  the  Octagon  Chap- 
el, in  Blackfriars  Road. 

"My  Lord,"  said  Rowland  Hill  once  to  a  noble- 
man,  "allow  me   to  present  to   your  Lordship   my 


A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS.  491 

friend,  Dr.  Jenner,  who  has  been  the  means  of  saving 
more  lives  than  any  other  man." 

"Ah!"  observed  Jenner,  "would  that  I,  like  you, 
could  say— souls." 

There  was  no  cant  in  this.  Jenner  was  a  simple, 
unaffected,  and  devout  man.  His  last  words  were, 
"I  do  not  marvel  that  men  are  grateful  to  me,  but 
I  am  surprised  that  they  do  not  feel  gratitude  to  God 
for  making  me  a  medium  of  good." 

Of  Jenner 's  more  sprightly  humour,  the  following 
epigrams  from  his  pen  (communicated  to  the  writer 
of  these  pages  by  Dr.  E.  D.  Jloore  of  Salop),  are  good 
specimens. 

"to   my   SPANISH    CIGAR. 

"Soother  of  an  anxious  hour! 

Parent  of  a  thousand  pleasures! 
Wilh  gratitude  I  owe  thy  power 

And  place  thee  'mongst  my  choicest  treasures. 
Thou  canst  the  keenest  pangs  disarm 

Which  care  obtrudes  upon  the  heart ; 
At  thy  command,  my  little  charm, 

Quick  from  the  bosom  they  depart." 

"on   the   death    of  JOHN   AND   BETTV   COLE. 

"Why,  neighbours,  thus  mournfully  sorrow  and  fret? 
Here  lie  snug  and  cosy  old  John  and  his  Bet; 
Your  sighing  and  sobbing  ungodly  and  rash  is. 
For  two  knobs  of  coal  that  have  now  gone  to  ashes." 

"on    miss   jenner   and    miss   EMILY   WORTHINGTON   TEARING 
THE    "globe"    newspaper. 

"The  greatest  curse  that  hath  a  name 
Most  certainly  from  woman  came. 
Two  of  the  se.K  the  other  night — 
Well  arm'd  with  talons,  venom,  spite, — 
Pull'd  caps,  you  say? — a  great  wonder! 
By  Jove,  they  pull'd  the  globe  asunder!" 

Dr.  Jenner  was  very  fond  of  scribbling  currente 

calamo  such  verses  as  these.    The  following  specimens 

of  his  literarj'  prowess  have,  we  believe,  never  before 

been  published. 


492  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 


HANNAH   BALL. — A   SONG. 

"Farewell,  ye  dear  lasses  of  town  and  of  city, 
Sweet  ladies,  adieu  to  you  all ! 
Don't  show  a  frown,  though  I  tune  up  a  ditty 
In  praise  of  fair  Hannah  Ball. 

"T'other  eve,  as  I  rambled  her  snug  cottage  by. 
Sly  Cupid  determined  my  fall. 
The  rogue,  'stead  of  darts,  shot  the  beams  of  her  eye. 

The  eye  of  my  fair  Hannah  Ball. 

"So  sweetly  she  look'd,  when  attired  so  fine. 
In  her  Dunstable  hat  and  her  shawl. 
Enraptured  I  cried — '  'Tis  a  Goddess  divine.' 
'No  indeed' — she  replied — 'Hannah  Ball.' 

"The  bosom  of  Delia,  tho'  whiter  than  snow. 
Is  no  more  than  black  velvet  pall — 
Compared  with  my  Hannah's — I'd  have  you  to  know — 
The  bosom  of  fair  Hannah  Ball. 

"The  honey  the  bee  from  her  jessamine  sips 
You'd  swear  was  as  bitter  as  gall, 
Could  you  taste  but  the  sweets  that  exhale  from  the  lips, 
From  the  lips  of  the  fair  Hannah  Ball. 

"What's  rouge,  or  carmine,  or  the  blush  of  the  rose? 
Why,  dead  as  the  lime  on  the  wall. 
Compared  with  the  delicate  colour  that  glows 
On  the  cheek  of  my  fair  Hannah  Ball. 

"When  David  melodiously  play'd  to  appease 
The  troubled  emotions  of  Saul, 
Were  his  sounds  more  enchanting — ah,  tell  me,  than  these? 
'Hannah.  Ball,  oh !  the  fair  Hannah  Ball.' 

"Near  yonder  fair  copse  as  I  pensively  rove 
In  an  eve,  when  the  dews  'gin  to  fall ; 
To  my  sighs  how  kind  echo  responds  from  the  grove — 
'Hannah  Ball,  oh !  the  fair  Hannah  Ball.' 

"With  graces  so  winning  see  Rossi  advance 

But  what's  all  his  grace? — Why  a  sprawl — 
With  my  Hannah  compared,  as  she  skims  through  the  dance — 
The  lovely,  the  fair  Hannah  Ball. 

"The  song  of  the  Mara — tho'  great  is  her  skill, 
Believe  me's  no  more  than  a  squall. 
Compared  with  the  rapturous  magical  trill 
Of  my  charming,  my  fair  Hannah  Ball. 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  493 


"For  oft  in  the  meads  at  the  close  of  the  day, 
Near  yon  murmuring  rivulet's  fall, 
Have  I  heard  the  soft  nightingale's  soul-piercing  lay, 
And  thought  'twas  my  fair  Hannah  Ball. 

"To  her  eyes  in  Love's  language  I've  told  a  soft  tale, 
But,  alas  !  they  replied  not  at  all ; 
Yet  bashfulness  oft  will  our  passions  conceal; 
Oh !  the  modest,  the  fair  Hannah  Ball. 

"Ye  Gods !  would  you  make  the  dear  creature  my  wife. 
With  thanks  would  I  bow  to  you  all ; 
How  smoothly  would  then  run  the  wheels  of  my  life. 
With  my  charming,  my  fair  Hannah  Ball. 

"But  should  my  petition  be  flung  from  the  skies, 
I'll  take  the  bare  bodkin  or  awl ; 
Yes!  the  cold  seal  of  Death  shall  be  fix'd  on  my  eyes, — 
What's  Life  without  fair  Hannah  Ball." 

This  is  a  happy  little  satire  on  a  vilage  scandal. 
The  Methodist  parson  and  Roger  were  amongst  the 
doctor's  rustic  neighbours. 

On  a  quarrel  between  Butler,  the  Methodist  parson  of  Framp- 
ton,  and  Roger  his  clerk.  Butler  accused  the  clerk  of  steal- 
ing his  liquors,  and  the  clerk  accused  Butler  of  stealing  his 
bacon. 

"Quoth  good  parson  Butler  to  Rogers  his  clerk, 
'How  things  come  to  light  that  are  done  in  the  dark  I 
Mv  wine  is  all  pilfer'd, — a  sad  piece  of  work, — 
But  a  word  with  chee,  Richard — I  see  thou'rt  no  Turk.' 

"  'What  evil  befall  us !' — quoth  Dick  in  reply, 
Whilst  contempt  methodistical  glanced  from  his  eye, — 
'My  bacon's  slipt  off  too — alas,  sir!  'tis  true, 
And  the  fact  seems  to  whisper  that — you  are  no  Jew.' " 

The  most  daring  of  Jenner's  epigrams,  out  of  the 

scores  that  we  have  perused,  is  the  following— 

ON  READING  ADAM   SMITH. 

"The  priests  may   exclaim  against  cursing  and  s^vearing, 
And  tell  us  such  things  are  quite  beyond  bearing; 
But  'tis  clear  as  the  day  their  denouncing's  a  sham; 
For  a  thousand  good  things  may  be  learnt  from  Adam." 

Babbage,  in  his  "Decline  of  Science  in  England," 


494  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

has  remarked  that  "some  of  the  most  valuable  names 
which  adorn  the  history  of  English  science  have  been 
connected  with  this  (the  medical)  profession."  Of 
those  names  many  have  belonged  to  country  doc- 
tors ;  amongst  which  Jenner  has  a  conspicuous  place.* 

Jenner  was  a  bright  representative  of  that  class 
of  medical  practitioners— sagacious,  well-instructed, 
courageous,  and  self-dependent  in  intellect— who,  at 
the  close  of  the  last  century,  began  to  spring  up  in  all 
parts  of  the  country,  and  have  rapidly  increased  in 
number;  so  that  now  the  prejudiced,  vulgar,  pedantic 
doctors  of  Sterne's  and  Smollett's  pages  are  extinct- 
no  more  to  be  found  on  the  face  of  the  earth  than  are 
the  drunken  squires  who  patronized  and  insulted 
them. 

Of  such  a  sort  was  Samuel  Parr,  the  father  of  the 

*  Medical  readers  will  be  amused  with  the  following  letter, 
written  by  Dr.  Jenner,  showing  as  it  does  the  excess  of  caution 
with  which  he  prepared  his  patients  for  the  trifling  operation 
of  vaccination. 

"Sir, 

"I  was  absent  from  home  when  your  obliging  letter  of 
the  24th  November  arrived;  but  I  do  not  think  this  is  likely 
to  occur  again  for  some  time,  and  I  shall  therefore  be  very 
happy  to  take  your  little  family  under  my  care  at  the  time  you 
mention — the  latter  end  of  January.  Our  arrangements  must 
be  carefully  made,  as  the  children  must  be  met  here  by  proper 
subjects  for  transferring  the  Vaccine  Lymph;  for  on  the  ac- 
curacy of  this  part  of  the  process  much  depends.  It  may  be 
necessary  to  observe  also,  that  among  the  greatest  impedi- 
ments to  vaccination  (indeed  the  greatest)  is  an  eruptive  state 
of  the  skin  on  the  child  intended  to  receive  the  infection.  On 
this  subject  I  wrote  a  paper  so  long  ago  as  the  year  1804,  and 
took  much  pains  to  circulate  it;  but  I  am  sorry  to  say  the 
attention  that  has  been  paid  to  it  by  the  Faculty  in  general 
has  been  by  no  means  equal  to  its  importance.  This  is  a  rock 
on  which  vaccination  has  been  often  wreck'd ;  but  there  is 
no  excuse,  as  it  was  so  clearly  laid  down  in  the  chart. 
"I  am,  Sir,  your  obedient 

"and  very  humble  servant, 

"Edward  Jenner." 


A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS.  495 

famous  classic  scholar  and  Whig  politician  of  the 
same  name.  The  elder  Parr  was  a  general  practition- 
er at  Harrow,  "a  man"  (as  his  son  described  him) 
"of  a  very  robust  and  vigorous  intellect."  Educated 
in  his  early  years  at  Harrow  School,  Samuel  Parr 
(the  son)  was  taken  from  that  splendid  seminary 
at  the  age  of  fourteen  years  and  apprenticed  to  his 
father.  For  three  or  four  years  he  applied  himself 
to  the  mastery  of  the  elements  of  surgical  and  med- 
ical knowledge— dispensing  medicines,  assisting  at  op- 
erations, and  performing  all  the  duties  which  a  coun- 
try doctor's  pupil  was  expected  to  perform.  But  he 
had  not  nerve  enough  for  the  surgical  department 
of  the  profession.  "For  a  physician,"  he  used  to  say, 
"I  might  have  done  well,  but  for  a  surgeon  never." 
His  father  consequently  sent  him  to  Cambridge,  and 
allowed  him  to  turn  his  intellects  to  those  pursuits 
in  which  Nature  had  best  fitted  him  to  excel.  Dr. 
Parr's  reminiscences  of  this  period  of  medical  in- 
struction were  nearly  all  pleasant— and  some  of  them 
were  exquisitely  droll.  At  that  early  age  his  critical 
taste  and  faculty  caused  him  to  subject  the  prescrip- 
tions that  came  under  his  notice  to  a  more  exact  scrut- 
iny than  the  dog-Latin  of  physicians  usually  under- 
goes. 

"Father,"  cried  the  boy,  glancing  his  eye  over  a 
prescription,  "here's  another  mistake  in  the  gram- 
mar!" 

"Sam,"  answered  the  irritable  sire,   "d the 

prescription,  make  up  the  medicine." 

Laudanum  was  a  preparation  of  opium  just  then 
coming  into  use.  Mr.  Parr  used  it  at  first  sparingly 
and  cautiously.    On  one  occasion  he  administered  a 


496  A  BOOK  ABOxrr  doctors. 

small  quantity  to  a  patient,  and  the  next  day,  pleased 
with  the  effects  of  the  dose,  expressed  his  intention 
(but  hesitatingly)  to  repeat  it. 

"You  may  do  that  safely,  sir,"  said  the  son. 

"Don't  be  rash,  boy.  Beginners  are  always  too 
bold.  How  should  you  know  what  is  safe?"  asked 
the  father. 

"Because,  sir,"  was  the  answer,  "when  I  made 
up  the  prescription  yesterday,  I  doubled  the  dose." 

' '  Doubled  the  dose !  How  dared  you  do  that  ? "  ex- 
claimed the  angry  senior. 

"Because,  sir,"  answered  little  Sam,  coolly,  "I  saw 
you  hesitate." 

The  father  who  would  not  feel  pride  in  such  a  son 
would  not  deserve  to  have  him. 

Though  Parr  made  choice  of  another  profession  he 
always  retained  a  deep  respect  for  his  father's  calling 
and  the  practitioners  of  it;  medical  men  forming  a 
numerous  and  important  portion  of  his  acquaintance. 
In  his  years  of  ripest  judgment  he  often  declared  that 
"he  considered  the  medical  professors  as  the  most 
learned,  enlightened,  moral,  and  liberal  class  of  the 
community." 

How  many  pleasant  reminiscences  this  writer  has 
of  country  surgeons— a  class  of  men  interesting  to  an 
observer  of  manners,  as  they  comprise  more  distinct 
types  of  character  than  any  other  professional  body. 
Hail  to  thee.  Dr.  Agricola !  more  yeoman  than  savant, 
bluff,  hearty,  and  benevolent,  hastening  away  from 
fanciful  patients  to  thy  farm,  about  which  it  is  thy 
pleasure,  early  and  late,  to  trudge,  vigilant  and 
canny,  clad  in  velveteen  jacket  and  leathern  gaiters, 
armed  with  spud-stick  or  double-barrel  gun,  and  look- 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  497 

ing  as  unlike  Andrew  Borde  or  Dr.  Slop  as  it  is  pos- 
sible to  conceive  mortal!  What  an  eccentric,  pious, 
tyrannical,  most  humane  giant  thou  art !  When  thou 
wast  mayor  of  thy  borough,  what  lawless  law  didst 
thou  maintain !  With  thine  own  arm  and  oaken  stick 
didst  thou  fustigate  the  drunken  poacher  who  beat  his 
wife ;  and  the  little  children,  who  made  a  noise  in  the 
market-square  on  a  Sunday,  thou  didst  incarcerate 
(for  the  sake  of  public  morality)  in  "the  goose- 
house"  for  two  hours;  but  (for  the  sake  of  mercy) 
thou  didst  cause  to  be  served  out  to  each  prisoner  one 
large  gingerbread  bun— to  soften  the  hardships  of 
captivity.  When  the  ague  raged,  and  provisions  were 
scarce  in  what  the  poor  still  refer  to  as  "the  bad 
year,"  what  prescriptions  didst  thou,  as  parish  doc- 
tor, shower  down  on  the  fever-ridden?— Mutton  and 
gin,  beef  and  wine— such  were  thy  orders !  The  par- 
sons said  bravo !  and  clapt  thee  on  the  back ;  but  the 
guardians  of  the  poor  and  the  relieving  officers  were 
up  in  arms,  and  summoned  thee  before  a  solemn  tri- 
bunal at  the  union-house— "the  board!"  in  fact. 
What  an  indignant  oath  and  scream  of  ridicule  didst 
thou  give,  when  an  attorney  (Sir  Oracle  of  "the 
board")  endeavoured  to  instil  into  thy  mind  the  first 
principles  of  supply  and  demand,  and  that  grandest 
law  of  political  economy— to  wit,  if  there  are  too 
many  poor  people  in  a  neighbourhood,  they  must  be 
starved  out  of  it  into  one  where  they  will  not  be  in 
the  way;  and  if  there  are  too  many  poor  people  in  the 
entire  world,  they  must  be  starved  out  of  that  also 
into  another,  where  there'll  be  more  room  for  them! 
And  what  was  thy  answer  to  the  chairman's  remark, 
"Doctor,  if  mutton  and  gin  are  the  only  medicines 

i— 82 


498  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTOBS. 

that  will  cure  the  sick  poor,  you  must  supply  them 
yourself,  in  accordance  with  your  contract"?  .What 
was  thy  answer?  Why,  a  shower  of  butchers'  and 
vintners'  bills,  pulled  from  the  pockets  of  thy  ancient 
gray  coat— bills  all  receipted,  and  showing  that,  be- 
fore asking  the  ratepayers  for  a  doit,  thou  hadst  ex- 
pended every  penny  of  thy  salary  of  £150  on  mutton 
and  gin,  beef  and  wine— for  the  sick  poor!  What  a 
noble  answer  to  a  petty  taunt!  The  chairman 
blushed.  The  attorney  hurried  away,  saying  he  had 
to  be  present  at  an  auction.  The  great  majority  of 
"the  board"  came  to  a  resolution,  engaging  to  sup- 
port you  in  your  schemes  for  helping  the  poor  through 
the  bad  year.  But  the  play  was  not  yet  at  an  end. 
Some  rumours  of  what  had  occurred  at  the  board 
reaching  the  ears  of  a  few  poor  peasants,  they  made 
bold  to  thank  thee  for  thy  exertions  in  their  behalf. 
How  didst  thou  receive  them? — With  a  violent  har- 
rangue  against  their  incorrigible  laziness  and  dishon- 
esty—an assurance  that  half  their  sufferings  sprung 
from  their  own  vices— and  a  vehement  declaration 
that,  far  from  speaking  a  good  word  for  them  to  the 
guardians,  thou  didst  counsel  the  sternest  and  cruel- 
lest of  measures. 

A  man  of  another  mould  and  temper  was  the  writ- 
er's dear  friend,  Felix.  Gentle  and  ardent,  tranqiiil 
as  a  summer  evening,  and  unyielding  as  a  rock, 
modest  but  brave,  unobtrusive  but  fearless,  he  had  a 
mind  that  poets  only  could  rightly  read.  Delicate  in 
frame,  as  he  was  refined  in  intellect,  he  could  not 
endure  rude  exertion  or  vulgar  pleasure.  Active  in 
mind,  he  still  possessed  a  vein  of  indolence,  thor- 
oughly appreciating  the  pleasure  of   dreaming  the 


A   BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS.  499 

whole  day  long  on  a  sunny  chair  in  a  garden,  sur- 
rounded with  bright  flowers  and  breathing  a  per- 
fumed air.  In  the  hot  season  the  country  people  used 
to  watch  their  doctor  traversing  the  country  in  his 
capacious  phaeton.  Alone,  without  a  servant  by  his 
side,  he  held  the  reins  in  his  hands,  but  in  his  reveries 
altogether  forgot  to  use  them.  Sometimes  he  would 
fall  asleep,  and  travel  for  miles  in  a  state  of  uncon- 
sciousness, his  great  phlegmatic  horse  pounding  the 
dust  at  the  rate  of  five  miles  an  hour.  The  somni- 
driverous  doctor  never  came  to  harm.  His  steed 
knew  how  to  keep  on  the  left-hand  side  of  the  road, 
under  ordinary  circumstances  passing  all  vehicles 
securely,  but  never  thinking  of  overtaking  any;  and 
the  country  people,  amongst  whom  the  doctor  spent 
his  days,  made  his  preservation  from  bodily  harm  an 
object  of  their  especial  care.  Often  did  a  rustic  way- 
farer extricate  the  doctor's  equipage  from  a  perilous 
position,  and  then  send  it  onwards  without  disturbing 
the  gentleman  by  waking  him.  The  same  placid, 
equable  man  was  Felix  in  society,  that  he  was  on  these 
professional  excursions — nothing  alarming  or  excit- 
ing him.  It  was  in  his  study  that  the  livelier  elements 
of  his  nature  came  into  play.  Those  who,  for  the  first 
time,  conversed  with  him  in  private  on  his  micro- 
scopic and  chemical  pursuits,  his  researches  in  his- 
tory, or  his  labours  in  speculative  or  natural  philos- 
ophy, caught  fire  from  his  fire  and  were  inspired  with 
his  enthusiasm. 

Felix  belonged  to  a  class  daily  becoming  more  num- 
erous ;  Miles  was  of  a  species  that  has  already  become 
rare— the  army  surgeon.  The  necessities  of  the  long 
war  caused  the  enrolment  of  numbers  of  young  men 


500  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTOKS. 

in  the  ranks  of  the  medical  profession,  whose  learning 
was  not  their  highest  recommendation  to  respect.  An 
old  navy  surgeon,  of  no  small  wit,  and  an  infinite 
capacity  for  the  consumption  of  strong  liquors— wine, 
brandy,  whisky,  usquebaugh  (anything,  so  long  as  it 
was  strong)— gave  a  graphic  description  to  this 
writer  of  his  examination  on  things  pertaining  to  sur- 
gery by  the  Navy  Board. 

"Well,"  said  the  narrator,  putting  down  his  empty 
glass  and  filling  it  again  with  Madeira— "I  was  shown 
into  the  examination-room.  Large  table,  and  half-a- 
dozen  old  gentlemen  at  it.  'Big- wigs,  no  doubt,' 
thought  I;  'and  sure  as  my  name  is  Symonds,  they'll 
pluck  me  like  a  pigeon. ' 

"  'Well,  sir,  what  do  you  know  about  the  science  of 
your  profession  ? '  asked  the  stout  man  in  the  chair. 

"  'More  than  he  does  of  the  practice,  I'll  be  bound,' 
tittered  a  little  wasp  of  a  dandy— a  West  End  ladies' 
doctor. 

' '  I  trembled  in  my  shoes. 

"  'Well,  sir,'  continued  the  stout  man,  'what  would 
you  do  if  a  man  was  brought  to  you  during  action 
with  his  arms  and  legs  shot  off?  Now,  sir,  don't  keep 
the  Board  waiting!  What  would  you  do?  Make 
haste!' 

"  'By  Jove,  sir!'  I  answered— a  thought  just  strik- 
ing me— 'I  should  pitch  him  overboard,  and  go  on  to 
some  one  else  I  could  be  of  more  service  to.' 

"By !  every  one  present  burst  out  laughing; 

and  they  passed  me  directly,  sir— passed  me  di- 
rectly!" 

The  examiners  doubtless  felt  that  a  young  man 
who  could  manifest  such  presence  of  mind  on  such  an 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  501 

occasion,  and  so  well  reply  to  a  terrorizing  question, 
might  be  trusted  to  act  wisely  on  other  emergencies. 

Many  stories  of  a  similar  kind  are  very  old 
acquaintances  of  most  of  our  readers. 

"What"— an  examiner  of  the  same  Board  is  re- 
ported to  have  said  to  a  candidate— "would  you  have 
recourse  to  if,  after  having  ineffectually  tried  all  the 
ordinary  diaphoretics,  you  wanted  to  throw  your 
patient,  in  as  short  a  time  as  possible,  into  a  profus6 
perspiration?" 

"I  should  send  him  here,  sir,  to  be  examined,"  was 
the  reply. 

Not  less  happy  was  the  audacity  of  the  medical 
student  to  Abernethy. 

"What  would  you  do,"  bluntly  inquired  the  sur- 
geon, "if  a  man  was  brought  to  you  with  a  broken 
leg?" 

"Set  it,  sir,"  was  the  reply. 

"Good— very  good— you're  a  very  pleasant,  witty 
young  man ;  and  doubtless  you  can  tell  me  what  mus- 
cles of  my  body  I  should  set  in  motion  if  I  kicked  you, 
as  you  deserve  to  be  kicked,  for  your  impertinence." 

"You  would  set  in  motion,"  responded  the  youth, 
with  perfect  coolness,  "the  flexors  and  extensors  of 
my  right  arm;  for  I  should  immediately  knock  you 
down. ' ' 

If  the  gentlemen  so  sent  forth  to  kill  and  cure  were 
not  overstocked  with  professional  learning,  they  soon 
acquired  a  knowledge  of  their  art  in  that  best  of  all 
schools— experience.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  great 
war  they  were  turned  loose  upon  the  country,  and 
from  their  body  came  many  of  the  best  and  most  suc- 
cessful practitioners  of  every  county  of  the  kingdom. 


502  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

The  race  is  fast  dying  out.  A  Waterloo  banquet  of 
medical  officers,  serving  in  our  army  at  that  memora- 
ble battle,  would  at  the  present  time  gather  together 
only  a  small  number  of  veterans.  This  writer  can  re- 
member when  they  were  pentiful;  and,  in  company 
with  two  or  three  of  the  best  of  their  class,  he  spent 
many  of  the  happiest  days  of  his  boyhood.  An  aroma 
of  old  camp  life  hung  about  them.  They  rode  better 
horses,  and  more  boldly,  than  the  other  doctors  round 
about.  However  respectable  they  might  have  become 
with  increased  years  and  prosperity,  they  retained 
the  military  knack  of  making  themselves  especially 
comfortable  under  any  untoward  combination  of  ex- 
ternal circumstances.  To  gallop  over  a  bleak  heath, 
through  the  cold  fog  of  a  moonless  December  night ;  to 
sit  for  hours  in  a  stifling  garret  by  a  pauper's  pallet; 
to  go  for  ten  days  without  sleeping  on  a  bed,  without 
undressing,  and  with  the  wear  of  sixteen  hours  out  of 
every  twenty-four  spent  on  horseback— were  only 
features  of  "duty,"  and  therefore  to  be  borne  man- 
fully, and  with  generous  endurance,  at  the  time— and, 
in  the  retrospect,  to  be  talked  of  with  positive  con- 
tentment and  hilarity.  They  loved  the  bottle,  too— 
as  it  ought  to  be  loved:  on  fit  occasions  drinking  any 
given  quantity,  and,  in  return,  giving  any  quantity 
to  drink;  treating  claret  and  the  thinner  wines  with 
a  levity  at  times  savouring  of  disdain ;  but  having  a 
deep  and  unvarying  affection  for  good  sound  port, 
and,  at  the  later  hours,  very  hot  and  very  strong 
whisky  and  water,  ivith  a  slice  of  lemon  in  each  tumb- 
ler. How  they  would  talk  during  their  potations! 
What  stories  and  songs!  George  the  Fourth  (even 
according  to  his  own  showing)  had  scarce  more  to  do 


A  BOOK  ABOXn"  DOCTOBS.  503 

in  bringing  about  the  victory  at  Waterloo  than  they. 
Lord  Anglesey's  leg  must  have  been  amputated 
thrice ;  for  this  writer  knew  three  surgeons  who  each— 
separately  and  by  himself— performed  the  operation. 
But  this  sort  of  boasting  was  never  indulged  in  before 
the  —  th  tumbler. 

May  a  word  not  be  here  said  on  the  toping  country 
doctor?  Shame  on  these  times!  ten  years  hence  one 
will  not  be  able  to  find  a  bibulous  apothecary,  though 
search  be  made  throughout  the  land  from  Dan  to 
Beersheba!  Sailors,  amongst  the  many  superstitions 
to  which  they  cling  with  tenacity,  retain  a  decided 
preference  for  an  inebrious  to  a  sober  surgeon.  Not 
many  years  since,  in  a  fishing  village  on  the  eastern 
coast,  there  flourished  a  doctor  in  great  repute 
amongst  the  poor;  and  his  influence  over  his  humble 
patients  literally  depended  on  the  fact  that  he  was 
sure,  once  in  the  four-and-twenty  hours,  to  be  hand- 
somely intoxicated.  Charles  Dickens  has  told  the 
public  how,  when  he  bought  the  raven  immortalised  in 
"Barnaby  Rudge,"  the  vendor  of  that  sagacious  bird, 
after  enumerating  his  various  accomplishments  and 
excellences,  concluded,  "But,  sir,  if  you  want  him  to 
come  out  very  strong,  you  must  show  him  a  drunk 
man."  The  simple  villagers  of  Flintbeach  had  a  firm 
faith  in  the  strengthening  effects  of  looking  at  a  tipsy 
doctor.  They  always  postponed  their  visits  to  Dr. 
Mutchkin  till  evening,  because  then  they  had  the  ben- 
efit of  the  learned  man  in  his  highest  intellectual  con- 
dition. '-Dorn't  goo  to  he  i'  the  mornin',  er  can't 
doctor  noways  to  speak  on  tills  er's  had  a  glass,"  was 
the  advice  invariably  given  to  a  stranger  not  aware 
of  the  doctor's  little  peculiarities. 


504  A   BOOK   ABOUT   DOCTORS. 

Mutchkin  was  unquestionably  a  shrewd  fellow, 
althougli  he  did  his  best  to  darken  the  light  with 
which  nature  had  endowned  him.  One  day,  accom- 
panied by  his  apprentice,  he  visited  a  small  tenant 
farmer  who  had  been  thrown  on  his  bed  with  a  smart 
attack  of  bilious  fever.  After  looking  at  his  patient's 
tongue  and  feeling  his  pulse,  he  said  somewhat 
sharply  :— 

"Ah!  'tis  no  use  doing  what's  right  for  you,  if  you 
will  be  so  imprudent." 

"Goodness,  doctor,  what  do  you  mean ? "responded 
the  sick  man;  "I  have  done  nothing  imprudent." 

"What!— nothing  imprudent?  Why,  bless  me, 
man,  you  have  had  green  peas  for  dinner." 

"So  I  have,  sir.    But  how  did  you  find  that  out?" 

"In  your  pulse— in  your  pulse.  It  was  very  fool- 
ish. Mind,  you  mayn't  commit  such  an  indiscretion 
again.    It  might  cost  you  your  life." 

The  patient,  of  course,  was  impressed  with  Mutch- 
kin's  acuteness,  and  so  was  the  apprentice.  When  the 
lad  and  his  master  had  retired,  the  former  asked  :— 

"How  did  you  know  he  had  taken  peas  for  dinner, 
sir?    Of  course  it  wasn't  his  pulse  that  told  you." 

"Why,  boy,"  the  instructor  replied,  "I  saw  the 
pea-shells  that  had  been  thrown  into  the  yard,  and  I 
drew  my  inference." 

The  hint  was  not  thrown  away  on  the  youngster. 
A  few  days  afterwards,  being  sent  to  call  on  the  same 
case,  he  approached  the  sick  man,  and,  looking  very 
observant,  felt  the  pulse. 

"Ah!— um— by  Jove!"  exclaimed  the  lad,  mimick- 
ing his  master's  manner,  "this  is  very  imprudent.  It 


A  BOOK    ABOUT  DOCTORS.  505 

may  cost  you  your  life.  Why,  man,  you've  eaten 
a  horse  for  your  dinner." 

The  fever  patient  was  so  infuriated  with  what  he 
naturally  regarded  as  impertinence,  that  he  sent  a 
pathetic  statement  of  the  insult  offered  him  to  Mutch- 
kin.  On  questioning  his  pupil  as  to  what  he  meant  by 
accusing  a  man,  reduced  with  sickness,  of  having  con- 
sumed so  large  and  tough  an  animal,  the  doctor  was 
answered— 

"Why,  sir,  as  I  passed  through  from  the  yard  I 
saw  the  saddle  hanging  up  in  the  kitchen." 

This  story  is  a  very  ancient  one.  It  may  possibly 
be  found  in  one  of  the  numerous  editions  of  Joe  Mil- 
ler's facetiae.  The  writer  has,  however,  never  met 
with  it  in  print,  and  the  first  time  he  heard  it.  Dr. 
Mutchkin,  of  Plintbeach,  was  made  to  figure  in  it  in 
the  matter  above  described. 

The  shrewdness  of  Mutchkin 's  apprentice  puts  us 
in  mind  of  the  sagacity  of  the  hydropathic  doctor, 
mentioned  in  the  "Life  of  Mr  Assheton  Smith."  A 
gentleman  devoted  to  fox-hunting  and  deep  potations 
was  induced,  by  the  master  of  the  Tedworth  Hunt,  to 
have  recourse  to  the  water  cure,  and  see  if  it  would 
not  relieve  him  of  chronic  gout,  and  restore  something 
of  the  freshness  of  youth.  The  invalid  acted  on  the 
advice,  and  in  obedience  to  the  directions  of  a  hydro- 
pathic physician,  proceeded  to  swathe  his  body,  upon 
going  to  his  nightly  rest,  with  wet  bandages.  The  air 
was  chill,  and  the  water  looked— very— cold.  The 
patient  shivered  as  his  valet  puddled  the  bandages 
about  in  the  cold  element.  He  paused,  as  a  schoolboy 
does,  before  taking  his  first  "header"  for  the  year  on 


506  A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

a  keen  May  morning ;  and  during  the  pause  much  of 
his  noble  resolve  oozed  away. 

"John,"  at  last  he  said  to  his  valet,  "put  into  that 

d water  half  a  dozen  bottles  of  port  wine,  to 

warm  it. ' ' 

John  having  carried  out  the  direction,  the  band- 
ages, saturated  with  port  wine  and  water,  were  placed 
round  the  corpulent  trunk  of  the  invalid.  The  next 
morning  the  doctor,  on  paying  his  visit  and  inspect- 
ing the  linen  swathes,  instead  of  expressing  astonish- 
ment at  their  discoloration  with  the  juice  of  the  grape, 
observed,  with  the  utmost  gravity:  — 

"Ah,  the  system  is  acting  beautifully.  See,  the 
port  wine  is  already  beginning  to  leave  you !" 

A  different  man  from  Dr.  Mutchkin  was  jovial  Am- 
brose Harvey.  Twenty  years  ago  no  doctor  through- 
out his  county  was  more  successful— no  man  more  be- 
loved. By  natural  strength  of  character  he  gained 
leave  from  society  to  follow  his  own  humours  without 
let,  hindrance,  or  censure.  Ladies  did  not  think  the 
less  highly  of  his  professional  skill  because  he  visited 
them  in  pink,  and  left  their  bedsides  to  ride  across  the 
country  with  Lord  Cheveley's  hounds.  Six  feet  high, 
handsome,  hearty,  well-bred,  Ambrose  had  a  welcome 
wherever  there  was  joy  or  sickness.  To  his  little  wife 
he  was  devotedly  attached  and  very  considerate ;  and 
she  in  return  was  very  fond,  and— what  with  woman 
is  the  same  thing— very  jealous  of  him.  lie  was 
liked,  she  well  knew,  by  the  country  ladies,  many  of 
whom  were  so  far  her  superiors  in  rank  and  beauty 
and  accomplishments,  that  it  was  only  natural  in  the 
good  little  soul  to  entertain  now  and  then  a  suspicious 
curiosity  about  the  movements  of  her  husband.    Was 


A  BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  507 

it  nothing  but  the  delicate  health  of  Lady  Ellin  that 
took  him  so  frequently  to  Hove  Hall  ?  How  it  came 
about,  from  what  charitable  whisperings  on  the  part 
of  kind  friends,  from  what  workings  of  original  sin 
in  her  own  gentle  breast,  it  would  be  hard  to  say;  but 
'tis  a  fact  that,  when  Hove  Hall  was  mentioned,  a 
quick  pain  seized  the  little  wife's  heart  and  colour 
left  her  cheek,  to  return  again  quickly,  and  in  in- 
creased quantity.  The  time  came  when  she  discov- 
ered the  groundlessness  of  her  fears,  and  was  deeply 
thankful  that  she  had  never,  in  any  unguarded 
moment,  by  clouded  brow,  or  foolish  tears,  or  sharp 
reply,  revealed  the  folly  of  her  heart.  Just  at  the 
time  that  Mrs.  Ambrose  was  in  the  midst  of  this  trial 
of  her  affection,  Ambrose  obtained  her  permission  to 
drive  over  to  a  town  twelve  miles  distant,  to  attend 
the  hunt  dinner.  The  night  of  that  dinner  was  a 
memorable  one  with  the  doctor's  wife.  Ambrose  had 
promised  to  be  home  at  eleven  o'clock.  But  twelve 
had  struck,  and  here  he  had  not  returned.  One  o  'clock 
— two  o'clock!  No  husband!  The  servants  had  been 
sent  to  bed  four  hours  ago;  and  Mrs.  Ambrose  sate 
alone  in  her  old  wainscotted  parlour,  with  a  lamp  by 
her  side,  sad,  and  pale,  and  feverish— as  wakeful  as 
the  house-dog  out  of  doors,  that  roamed  round  the 
house,  barking  out  his  dissatisfaction  at  the  prolonged 
absence  of  his  master. 

At  length,  at  half-past  two,  a  sound  of  wheels  was 
at  the  door,  and  in  another  minute  Ambrose  entered 
the  hall,  and  greeted  his  little  wife.  Ah,  Mrs.  Ellis, 
this  writer  will  not  pain  you  by  entering  into  details 
in  this  part  of  his  story.  In  defence  of  Ambrose,  let 
it  be  said  that  it  was  the  only  time  in  all  his  married 


508  A   BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

life  that  he  paid  too  enthusiastic  homage  to  the  god 
of  wine.  Something  he  mumbled  about  being  tired, 
and  having  a  headache,  and  then  he  walked,  not  over- 
steadily,  upstairs.  Poor  Mrs.  Ambrose!  It  was  not 
any  good  asking  him,  what  had  kept  him  out  so  late. 
Incensed,  frightened,  and  jealous,  the  poor  little  lady 
could  not  rest.  She  must  have  one  doubt  resolved. 
Where  had  her  husband  been  all  this  time  ?  Had  he 
been  round  by  Kove  Hall?  Had  she  reflected,  she 
would  have  seen  his  Bacchic  drowsiness  was  the  best 
possible  evidence  that  he  had  not  come  from  a  lady's 
drawing-room.  But  jealousy  is  love's  blindness.  A 
thought  seized  the  little  woman's  head;  she  heard  the 
step  of  Ambrose's  man  in  the  kitchen,  about  to  retire 
to  rest.  Ah,  he  could  tell  her.  A  word  from  him 
would  put  all  things  right.  Quick  as  thought,  with- 
out considering  her  own  or  her  husband's  dignity,  the 
angry  little  wife  hastened  down-stairs,  and  entered 
the  kitchen  where  John  was  paying  his  respects  to 
some  supper  and  mild  ale  that  had  been  left  out  for 
him.  As  evil  fortune  would  have  it,  the  step  she  had 
taken  to  mend  matters  made  them  worse. 

"Oh,  John,"  said  the  lady,  telling  a  harmless  fib, 
"I  have  just  come  to  see  if  cook  left  you  out  a  good 
supper. ' ' 

John— most  civil  and  trustworthy  of  grooms— rose, 
and  posing  himself  on  his  heels,  made  a  respectful 
obeisance  to  his  mistress,  not  a  little  suiprised  at  her 
anxiety  for  his  comfort.  But,  alas !  the  potations  at 
the  hunt-dinner  had  not  been  confined  to  the  gentle- 
men of  the  hunt.  John  had,  in  strong  ale,  taken  as 
deep  draughts  of  gladness  as  Ambrose  had  in  wine. 
At  a  glance  his  mistress  saw  the  state  of  the  ease,  and 


A   BOOK   ABOUT  DOCTORS.  509 

in  her  fright,  losing  all  caution,  put  her  question 
point-blank,  and  with  imperious  displeasure— "John, 
where  have  you  and  your  master  been?— tell  me  in- 
stantly." 

An  admirable  servant— honest  and  well-intentioned 
at  all  times— just  then  confused  and  loquacious- 
John  remembered  him  how  often  his  master  had  im- 
pressed upon  him  that  it  was  his  duty  not  to  gossip 
about  the  places  he  stopped  at  in  his  rounds,  as  pro- 
fessional secrecy  was  a  virtue  scarcely  less  necessary 
in  a  doctor's  man-servant  than  in  a  doctor.  Acting 
on  a  muddle-headed  reminiscence  of  his  instructions, 
John  reeled  towards  his  mistress,  endeavouring  to 
pacify  her  with  a  profusion  of  duteous  bobbings  of 
the  head,  and  in  a  tone  of  piteous  sympathy,  and  with 
much  incoherence,  made  this  memorable  answer  to  her 
question:  "I'm  very  sorrj-,  mum,  and  I  do  hope, 
mum,  you  won 't  be  angry.  I  alius  wish  to  do  you  my 
best  duty— that  I  do,  mum— and  you're  a  most  good, 
affable  missus,  and  I,  and  cook,  and  all  on  us  are  very 
grateful  to  you." 

"Never  mind  that.  ^Vhere  have  you  and  your  mas- 
ter been  ?    That 's  my  question. ' ' 

"Indeed,  mum— I  darnatellye,  it  would  bes  goodas- 
meplace  \vi'  master.  I  dare  not  say  where  we  ha' 
been.  For  master  rekwested  me  patikler  not  to  de- 
wulge." 

But  thou  hadst  not  wronged  thy  wife.  It  was  not 
iMae  to  hurt  any  living  thing,  dear  friend.  All  who 
knew  thee  will  bear  witness  that  to  thee,  and  such  as 
thee,  Crabbe  pointed  not  hit,  bitter  lines:— 

"But  soon  a  loud  and  hasty  summons  calls, 
Shakes  the  thin  roof,  and  echoes  round  the  walls ; 


510  A  BOOK  ABOUT*  DOCTORS. 

Anon  a  figure  enters,  quaintly  neat, 
All  pride  and  business,  bustle  and  conceit, 
With  looks  unalter'd  by  these  scenes  of  woe. 
With  speed  that  entering  speaks  his  haste  to  go; 
He  bids  the  gazing  throng  around  him  fly, 
And  carries  Fate  and  Physic  in  his  eye; 
A  potent  quack,  long  versed  in  human  ills. 
Who  first  insults  the  victim  whom  he  kills. 
Whose  murd'rous  hand  a  drowsy  bench  protect. 
And  whose  most  tender  mercy  is  neglect. 
Paid  by  the  Parish  for  attendance  here. 
He  wears  contempt  upon  his  sapient  sneer. 
In  haste  he  seeks  the  bed  where  misery  lies, 
Impatience  mark'd  in  his  averted  eyes; 
And,  some  habitual  queries  hurried  o'er, 
Without  reply,  he  rushes  to  the  door; 
His  drooping  patient,  long  inured  to  pain, 
And  long  unheeded,  knows  remonstrance  vain; 
He  ceases  now  the  feeble  help  to  crave 
Of  man.  and  mutely  hastens  to  the  grave." 

THE  END. 


INDEX. 


Abernethy,    Dr.    John,    48,    158,    159. 

180,   213.    214.    216,    375,    407. 
Abernethy,   Biscuit,    162. 
Addlngton,    Dr.    Anthony.    394. 
Agrlcola,    Dr.,    496. 
Agrlppa.    Cornelius.    87. 
Alkin,    Dr..    48,    428. 
Allhauds    Powder.    102. 
Akenslde,    Dr.,    327.   381. 
Albeniarle,    Duke   of,   54,    118. 
Alexander,    William,    320. 
Allan,    43. 

Alston,    Sir    Richard.    257. 
Aiured,     Thomas,     274. 
Andrew,    Merry,    29,    422. 
Anne,    Queen,    92.    93.    94.    118.     117, 

119,    131,    163,    189.    242.    262. 
Anthony.   Dr.  i^rancis,  467. 
Antiochus,    168. 
Arbuthnot,   Dr.,   62.   72.   132.   138.  144, 

163,    186,    187,    190.    191.    192. 
Archer,   Dr.   John,  148,   149,  150,  225. 
Argent,    Dr.,    17. 
Armstrong,    Dr..   426. 
Arnold,    Dr.,    345. 
Askew,   Dr.,    10.  244. 
Atkins,    Dr.    Henry,    66,  204. 
Atkins,    Will,    15. 
Aubrey.    John.    25.    464. 
Augustus,    13.     168. 
Ayliffe.   Sir  John.   165.   166. 
Ayre,   William.   74. 
Bacon,    Lord,    82.    255.    2S7. 
Ballllc.    Dr..    10.    244.    394. 
Baker.    Dr.     161.    332. 
Ballow,    Mr.,   381. 
Baltrop,   Dr.    Robert.   29. 
Bancroft.    Dr.    John.    139. 
Barber — surgeons,    12. 
Baring.    Sir    F..    178. 
Barrowby.   Dr.,   155.   156. 
Barrymore.  Lord,  154. 
Bartley,    Dr.,   29. 
Barton.    Mr.,   278. 
Bayle.    Dr..    78. 
Beauclerc.    Lady    Vere.    289. 
Bcautord,    Dr..   154,    155. 
Beauford.    Thomas.    474. 
Beckford.   45. 
Bcddoes,    Dr..    116. 
Bedford.  Duke  of.  96,  309. 
Behn,   Afra,    200. 
Bennet,   Dr.,   3.S2. 
Bentham,   Jeremy.    397.  ■ 
Bentley.    184.    185.    252. 
Berkeley.   Bishop,   96. 
Berry,    Miss,   318. 
BettertoD,   138, 


Bickersteth,    Dr.   Henry,   39fl> 

Bidloe.    Dr.,    '18. 

Blackmore,    Sir    Richard.    39.    61,    73, 

74,      113,      115,    117,    186,    193, 

376,    427. 
Bleeding,   225. 

Blizard.    Sir    William,    114,   245. 
Blood.    Mrs.,    309. 
Blount,    Col..    195. 
Bohn.    Mr..    26. 
Bond,  John.   M.   A..    183. 
Borcel.   William    de,    55. 
Borde,   Andrew,   29.    423,   479. 
Boswell.    James,    140,    308.    333,    339, 

463. 
Boulter.  Mr..  473. 
Bourdier,    Dr.,    20S. 
Bouvart,    Dr..    169. 
Boydeli,    Mary.    408. 
Boyle.    Mr.,    57,    58,    272,    467. 
Brennen.    Dr.  John.    386. 
Brocklesby.  Dr..   16.   211.   381. 
Brodie,   Sir  Benjamin,   107,    166.   366, 

370. 
Bruce.    Robert.    193. 
Browne,  Sir  Thomas.   38. 
Buckle,  Mr.,  x;3. 
Buckingham,   Duchess  of,   152. 
Buckingham.   Duke   of.    47.    68. 
Buckinghampshlre.    Countess   of.    370. 
Bulieyn.    Richard.   37. 
Bulleyn,   Dr.    William,  25.  26,  29,  37, 

64,    165.    229. 
Bungalo.    Prof.,    92. 
Buns.    Dr.,    29. 
Burke.    Edmund.  211,   441. 
Burnet,   Gilbert.   131. 
Burton,    Dr.,    67. 
Burton,    Robert.    263,   428. 
Barton,    Sim,    292. 
Busby.    Dr..    9. 
Butler.    Dr..    211. 
Butler,   Samuel.    260. 
Butler.    Dr.    William.    25,    179. 
Butts.   Sir  William,  25.   164.   166. 
Byron.    Lord,    193.    328. 
Cadogan.    Lord,   290    393. 
Cains.   22. 
Calfe.    Thomas.    29. 
Chambre.   Dr.   John.  21. 
Campan.   Madame.   283. 
Campanella,    Thomas,    13.    264. 
Cane.  11. 
Canker,    33. 
Canning.    421. 
Cardan,  264. 
Caroline,   Queen.   174. 
Carr,  Dr.,  28, 


512 


INDEX. 


Carrtflges,  17. 
Carteret.    George,   66. 
Case,   John.    167. 
Cashln.    Catherine,    364.    370. 
Catherine,   Empresa,  179. 
Cavendish.    Lord   C.    181. 
Cbalon,    Comtesse   de     3-19. 
Charles    I..    23,    42.    173,    204. 

11.,  15,  17,  23,  3S.  40,  57, 
148,  1B7,  173,  174.  234, 
472. 

VI.,    221. 

IX.,    173. 

XI.,   203. 
Charleton.    Dr..    6S. 
Chartres,    Francis.    191, 
Chatham,  Earl  of,  384, 
Chaucer,   20. 
Cheke,   Sir  John,    138. 
Cbemberllne,  TJ. 
Chesflden,    Dr.,   68,   215,    292. 
Chester.    Richard.    332. 
Chesterfield.    Lord,    233.    314. 
Cheyne,    Dr..    146.   247,   377,   399. 
Cholmondley',    Miss,    238. 
Churchill.   General,   180,   290. 
Clarke,    Mr..    233. 
Clarke.    Sir  James.    18,    107. 
Clermont,    Lady,    349. 
Clopton.    Roger.   312. 
Coakley,    Dr..  339. 
Codrlngton.   Col.,   195,   190. 
Cogan,   Dr.,  428, 
Coke    11. 

Coldwell,    Dr.,   229, 
Coleridge.    S.   T.,   41. 
Coles,    William,    178. 
Collier.   Jeremy.    200. 
ColUngton,    Sir   James.    193. 
Colombelre,   De  la,  380. 
Combermer.    Lord,    393. 
Congreve.    201. 
ConoUy.    Dr..    221. 
Conway,   Lady.   271,   272. 
Conway.    Lord,    273. 
Cooper,  Sir   Astley,    13,   70     177.    382. 

375. 
Cooper,  Bransby,    375, 
Cooper,  Dr.    William,    216, 
Cordus,  Eurlcus,    168. 
Cordus,  Valerius,   65. 
CornwalUs.    Lord,    290. 
Corvlsart,    Dr.,  205. 
Cotgrare.    85. 
Coytler,   Dr.,  203. 
Crabbe,    George,   438. 
Cranworth.    Lord.    311,    320, 
Creswell.    Sir    Creawell,    485, 
Croft,    Sir   Richard,  394. 
Cromwell,    83. 
Crossfleld.    Thomas,    435. 
Crowe.    Mrs.,    290. 
Crulkshank,  George,  413, 
"  Dr.,   211. 


Cudwortb,    Dr.,    272. 

Cullum,   Sir  Thomas   Geery,   398. 

Cumberland.    Karl  of,    171. 

Curran,  John   I'hllpot.   213. 

Curray,    Dr.    ■Calomel,"    162. 

Cutler,  Sir  John,  472. 

Dalmaboy,    Colonel.    15. 

Darrell,   Lady,  33,  165. 

Darwin,   Dr.   Erasmus,  428. 

Davy.   Sir  Humphrey,  89,  60,  61,   62. 

429. 
Davy,   Lady,   62. 
Dawson,   John,    406. 
Dawson.    Dr.    Thomas,    406. 
Dee,  Dr.,  42. 
Delaune,    471. 
Denman.    Dr.    Joseph,    394. 
Denman,    Lord,   393,   394. 
Dennis,  375. 
Denton,    Dr..   272. 
Derby.   Edward.  Earl  of,  44,   165. 
De   Rothes,    Countess,    398. 
Derwentwater,   Earl   of.    111. 
Desault.    13. 

Desmond.    Countess   of.    254. 
Devonshire,    Duchess.   349. 
D'Ewes.  Sir  Symonds.  480. 
Diamond,   Dr..   41.   321.  4.'!4. 
Dickens,    Charles.    B03. 
Digby,   Sir  Everard,   42. 
Dlgby,    Sir   Kenelm,   38,   67,   68,   2S2. 
DlUy,   Charles    339. 
Dlmsdale.    Dr..   179. 
DIoscorldes,    64. 
Dodds.    J.imes,    357. 
Dodsley.    328. 
Doran,    John.    167,    466. 
Dorset,   Richard,   Earl  of,  343. 
Douglas,    Sylvester,    ^1)5. 
Drake.   Dr.   James.    125. 
Drydcn     John,    38.    74.    194.    197.    201. 

379. 
Dnbols.   Dr..  205. 
Ducrow.    Andrew.   372. 
Dumeny.    .381. 
DumouUn,    Dr..    104. 
Dunoyer.    Madame,    380. 
Dureui     Madame.    381. 
Dwyer,'j.   W..  277. 
Dyson,    Dr..    328. 
Edmunds,  Dr.,  29. 
Edward  I..  40. 

"        II..    258. 

"         III..    166.    170,    476. 
VI..    21,    173. 
Edwards,  Dr.,  29. 
Edwards.    George,  56. 
Eliot,  Sir  John,  402,  403.  408. 
Elizabeth.    Queen,    40.    164,    173.    203. 
Elliot,  Sir  Thomas,  29,  33,   165,  229. 
Elmy.    Sarah.    438. 
Elton.   Sir   Marwood,   393. 
Embrocations.    30. 
But,   Dr.,   58. 


IXDEX. 


bV6 


EraaiBtratus,    ICS. 

Erstlne.    180.    194. 

Kugene.    Prince.    153. 

Evelyn.   John.    57.    174. 

Everard.   Dr..   150,  225. 

Faber,    Dr.,  272. 

Falrclough.   Dr.    James,   272,  274. 

Falre.   Thomas.   29. 

Falloplus.    Gabriel,    144. 

Fees.    163. 

Ferriar.   Dr..  428. 

FieidinB.    Beaa.   42.    186. 

Fielding.    Henry.    96.    316. 

Fielding.  Sir  John.  316. 

Flemyng.    Dr..   146. 

Fludd.    Dr.    Robert.   422.   439. 

Fludd     Dr.   Thomas.   435. 

Foote.  Samuel.  463. 

Ford.    Charles.   132. 

Fordyce.   Dr.  George,   153. 

Forstcr,    Dr..    320. 

Fotherglll.   Dr.  John,  207.  335.  .3.37. 

Fox.  Charles  James,   430. 

Fox.    Simeon.    17. 

Francis     II.,    :V3. 

French.    Mrs..    2S8. 

Frere,    Dr..    29. 

Frelnd.   Dr..    152.    188.    251.  252.  318. 

375. 
Froissart.   221. 
Fuller.  Thomas.   25.  180. 
Gaddesden.    John    of,    25S. 
Galen.    13. 
GaUleo.    369. 
Gardiner.   Joseph.    292. 
Garrick,    David.    314. 
Garth.    Sir    Samuel.    63.    92.    113.    152. 

186.     194.     109.     333,    375.    ."ITS. 

433.    472. 
Gascoigne.    Sir    William.    33.    165. 
Gasiiln.    Dr..    1.55. 
Gay,   John.   186. 
Gebcr,   255. 
Gee,  Dr.,  29. 
George   I..   243. 

III..    160,    173.    174,   340,   350. 

431. 
IV..    170.    173. 
Germain.   Lord   George,   402. 
Getseus.     John     Daniel.     265. 
Gibbons.     Dr.,     113,     117,     139,     l,^ 

375. 
Gilbert.    Dr..    276. 
Gisborne.    Dr.    Thomas.    394. 
Gioueester.    Duke   of,    118. 
Glynn.    Dr..    162.    208,    400. 
Ooddard.    Dr.,    88.    • 
Godolphin      Sir    John.    272,    313.    31S. 
Goldsmith.   Oliver.   86.   115,    185.    189. 

426. 
Good.     Dr.    Mason.    428. 
Goodwin.    Mr..   78. 
Gordonius.    13. 
Gout.    S3. 

Qower.    Lord.    156. 
4— SS 


Grafton.   Duke  of.   317. 

Graham,  Dr.   James,  345,  350,   951. 

Grainger.   427. 

Grant.     Roger.    94.    95. 

Gray,   Thomas,  333. 

Greatrakes.    Valentine.    265-273. 

Greaves,  Sir  Edmund.  55. 

Green.    Richard.    439. 

Gregory.  Dr.  James.   193,  209. 

Grenville.    lord.   207. 

Grey.    Dr..   479. 

Griffith.    Mrs..    426. 

GuDgeiand.   Coursus  de.    170. 

Guy.    Thomas.    466.    470. 

Guyllyam.    Dr.,    221. 

Gwynn.    Neil.    157. 

Oyer.    Nicholas.   228. 

Hale.    Dr..    252. 

Hales.    Stephen.   291. 

Halford,    Sir   Henry.   173.   393.   421. 

Halifai.    Charley.    486. 

Halley.  Dr..   185. 

Hamey.   Baldwin.   6.^. 

Hamilton.    Sir    Willie  m.    348. 

Hancock.  The   Eev.  John.  95. 

Handel.    161. 

Hannes.    Sir    Edward.    113.    114.    115. 

249.    375.    384. 
Harrington.    Dr..    429. 
Harris,  Sir  Edward,  285. 
Harris.   Edmund,  285. 
Hartley.    Dr.    D.,   292. 
Hartman,   George,   45. 
Harvey,   Dr.  John.  24.  369. 
Harvey.    Dr.    Ambrose.    506. 
Harward.    Simeon.    228. 
Hastings.  Mrs.  .Sarah.  288. 
Hiitcher.    Dr..    29.    164. 
Haveningh.im.    Sir   .Viithony.    33,    165. 
Hawkins.    Dr.    C.    292. 
Hawkins.  Sir  John.  330. 
Ilaygarth.    Dr.,    277. 
Hearne.   Thomas.  225.  423. 
Heberden.    Dr.    W.,   51.    US.    161.   211. 
Hel,  Dr.  Majlmlllan,  283. 
Henry  111.,  40.   173. 

"       IV.,    23.    173. 

"       VII..   21. 

VIII.,    21.    161.    171.    422.    468. 
Hernclius.    I'riuce.    303. 
Herturth.   Enrl  of,   106. 
Hermes.    9.    11. 
Hertford     Marquis  of.    2.35. 
Hill.    Sir    John.    59.    .398.    479. 
Hill.    Sir   Rowland.    400. 
Hilton.   Sir   Thomas.   36. 
Hilton.    William.    38. 
Hippocrates.   226. 
Ilobart.    Sir    Nathaniel.    272. 
Hogarth.    463.    468. 
Hook.   Mrs..  99. 
Horace.    308. 
Howe.   Dr..   212. 
Howell.   James.   46. 
Hughes,  Mary  Aao.  99. 


514 


INDEX. 


Hulse,    Dr.    Edward.    72.    232. 
Hunter.    Dr.   John.   23,   215,   295,   355, 

36D.    376,    405,    413. 
Hunter,    Dr.    WfUiam,   175. 
Huyck,   Dr.,   29. 
Hyatt.   Mr.,    178. 
Ingestre,    Lord,    370. 
Inverness,    Lady,    303. 
Ivan,    Dr.,    203. 

Jumea  I.,  42,  47,  173,  204,  225,  471, 
479. 

"       II.,    198. 

"       IV.,    166. 
Jcmes,  Dr.,  251. 
Jebb,    Dr.   .John.    160. 
Jcbb     Sir    Ulchard,    159.   160,   205. 
Jeffcott.    Sir   John,    384. 
Jeffries,   Dr.,  383. 
Jenkins,   Henry.   254. 
Jenner.    Dr.    Edward,    295,    389     375. 

488. 
Jermaine.    Lady   Betty,  289. 
Jobuson.  Samaol,   16.   39.   r,:!.   67.   115, 
140.     194,     201.    2"2.     239.    262. 
308,   330.   333.  427,  463. 
Jonsou,   Ben.  42,   44. 
Joseph,   Emperor,  179, 
Jurln,   Dr.  James.   184. 
Katterfeits,    Dr..   103. 
Kavanaugh,    Lady  Harriet,  370. 
Kaye,    John,    22,    29. 
Keats,  John,  438. 
Keill.   184. 

Kellet,    Alexander     181. 
Kemp.    Dr.    Mitchell,    415. 
Kennlx.    Margaret,    298. 
King,  Sir  Edm.ind,  72,   113,   117,  2;:l. 
King,    Dr.,    299. 
Kingsdown.    Lord.    393.    394. 
Kitchener.    Dr..  42. 
Kahn,   ThamasUouU.  303. 
Kneller.    Sir   Godfrey.    118.    119. 
Knlghtley,    Sir   nii'hard.   20.^ 
Kunyngham.   Dr.    William,  29. 
Lambert.    Daniel.    145. 
Langdale.    Lord.    396. 
Langton.   Dr..   19,   29. 
Lawrence,    Sir   Thomas,   .358. 
Lai,    Mr..   27.8. 
Leake    Robert.  2-17. 
Lettso'm,   Dr.  John  Coaklcy.  178.  207. 

335.    375.    385. 
Levlt,   John.   78,   252. 
Levitt.    Willlnm    Sprlngall.    438. 
Lewis.'  Jenkin.   115. 
Lewis,   M.   O..   411. 
Linacre.   22.   29.    13S. 
Lloyd,   Mrs.,   369. 
Locke     Dr.    John.   421. 
Lococi.    Dr..   2S7. 
Lodge.   Edmund,   43. 
Long,    John    St.    John.    366.    402. 
Louis   XIH.,    23.    17:t. 

"       XIV.,   206,   236. 


Louie   XV.,    146. 

Loutherbourg.    Mr.    and   Mrs.,   97,   98, 

99,    100.    101. 
Lovell,    Dr.,   277. 
Lovkin,   Dr.,  29. 
Lower.    Dr.,    Ku. 
Lowther,  Sir  J:ime9.  290. 
Ludtord.    Dr.    Simon,   29. 
Luff.   Dr.,   113. 
Macartney,    Dr.,    370. 
Maciuilay,    Catherine.    345. 
M'Dougal,    Peter,    108.    109.    ilO. 
Macllwaln.    Gonrgp.    214.    375. 
Mackintosh,   Lady.   303. 
Macnish.    Dr.,    436. 
Maecenas,   48. 
Mahomet.    S3. 
Mandeville.   140. 
Manfleld,    Dr.,   28. 
Manley    Mis.,  200. 
Mapletoft,   Dr..   52. 
Mapp,   Mrs..  295. 
Marie  Louise.    205. 
Marlborough,    Tlukc  of.   77.    248,   313. 

"  Duchess  of.   140. 

Marshall,   Dr.,    112.   389. 
Martial,    186. 
Marvel.   Andrew.  272. 
Mary.    Queen.    17.1. 
Marwood,  Dr.,  r03. 
Masham.    Lady,    132.    137. 
Mason,   William,   333. 
Masters,  Dr.,  29. 
Maunln.    381. 

Maxwell.    Dr.    William.    281. 
Mayerne,    Sir    Theodore,    23.    25,    48, 

66,    146,    170. 
Mead.  The   Rev.    Matthew.   210. 
Mead,    Dr.    Richard.    10.    68,    81,    9T, 

134,    136,    137,    142,      l.')2.     207, 

239.    292.    377.    403.    434. 
Meade,    Dr.    William  G.,    254. 
Meagrim,    Molly,   354. 
Mereuriua,    11. 
Mercury.   9. 

Meredith,    Sir   Amos,    373. 
Mesmer    Dr.    I-^rcderlck  Anthony,  256, 

264,    265.    275,    280.    345. 
Messenger.    Elizabeth,    312. 
Messenger.    Thomas,    312. 
MIgaldus.    264. 
Miller.  Joseph,   143. 
Mlllingen.    Dr..    382.    429. 
Mllllngton,   .Sir  Thomas.  72. 
Molr.    Dr..   436. 
Uonsey.    Dr.    Messenger.   311. 
Monsey,   Dr.   Robert.  312. 
Montague,   Lord,   42. 

"  Mrs.,    318,    321. 

Montaigne.   263. 
Moore.    Dr.    E.    D.,    491. 
Moore,    Rev.    Giles,    481. 
Moore,    Dr.   John.   428. 
UorguD,    Hugo,    203. 


INDEX. 


515 


Morrison.   Mr..  S3. 

Morrison's  pills.    373. 

Moselc.v.  Dr..  4S9. 

Mou-ssett.    Dr.,   23. 

Munchausen.  236. 

Murphy.    Arthur.  463. 

Wusa.    AntLinlus.    13. 

Mutchliln.   Dr..  503. 

M.versbach.    Dr.,   102. 

Myrepsus,    Nicholas,    66. 

Napoleon.    205. 

Nash.   Beau.  378. 

Nelson.    Dr..    178. 

Nelson.    Lord.    193. 

Ne.sbltt.    Dr.,    240.    292. 

Neslp.    Blarquise   de.   381. 

New  (on.    Sir   Isaac,    1S5.    252.   255. 

Nicholson.   Anthony,  273. 

Noble,    J.    P..   277. 

Nnrtliumberland.    Earl   of.    44. 

Nutley.    Billy.    125. 

Ople.   John.   433. 

Ormoud,    Marchioness.    36S.    370. 

Orrey.   Ejrl  of.  £116.  271. 

Osborn.    Jack.    311. 

PaKC.    Mr..   4"8. 

Palnn-ry.    Dr..   230. 

Paiinell.'  Dr.    Thomas.    29, 

Paracel.sus.    226.    2.'=,8,    257.    284, 

Pare.    Ambrose.   173. 

Park.  Judt'o    367. 

Parnell.  ISO.' 

Parr.    Sin-.uel.    fi7.   .345,    494. 

Paris.    Sir   Philip.    165. 

Paris,   Kir  William,  33,   66. 

Pe(!:;i;oj'ues.   183. 

Peele.    Sir   Robert,   397. 

Pellett,   Dr.    Thonja.i.  241,   292. 

Pembcrton,    Dr.    Edward.   305. 

Penie.    Dr.,    229. 

Pepys.  Sir  Lucas.  238.  .304.  .397, 

Pepys.   Samuel.   465. 

Percy.   Thoma,"i.   44,   427. 

Perkins's   tractors,   276,   283. 

Pettl(!rew.    Dr.,    376. 

Phillips,    285. 

Phr"aH.   Dr.  John.  20, 

Pindar.    Peter.  430. 

Pitcairn,   Dr.,   20.  244. 

PlRcnlon.    .Tohannes,   65. 

Plasters,   30. 

Pelhlll.    David.   241. 

Poliftnr.c.    Cnuntey,^.    381. 

Pooley     ThoniaK.    274. 

Pope,    Alesaniler,   53.  67.  68,  93.    186. 

190,     194.     198,    200,     252.    318, 

334.   370.  473. 
Popple,    W.,    274. 
Porter,    Dr.   John.    20. 
Portland,     Earl  of,    IIR. 
Pratt,    Slnry,   117,    HS.   99.    100. 
Precious   water,   30. 
Princle,  Sir  John,  50,  161. 
Quacka,  S2. 


Quarin.  Dr.,  179. 

Quarrels,   374. 

B.   11. 

Radclltfe,     Dr.    John,     10.     Ill,     152. 

153.     204,    242,    243,     244,    249. 

314.    375.    403. 
Radnor,    Lord.    232,    473. 
Rahere,    Dr.,    468. 
Raleigh,   Sir  Walter,   203. 
Ramadge.    Dr..  370. 
Ranby.    Mr,.   316. 
Ranelagh.   Lady.   273. 
Ranelagh.    Lord.   .SOS. 
Read.    Henry,    254. 
Reade.    Sir    William,    93,   95. 
Redshaw.    Mrs.    Hannah.    123. 
Reynolds.    Baron,   i;6,    180. 
Reynolds.     Dr.     Henry     Revelle,     16, 

394. 
Reynolds.   Sir  Joshua.   427. 
Richardson.    Daniel.   3.%6.   357. 
Richelieu.    381. 
Robertson,    Willam,    193. 
Koblnson,    Mr..    317. 
Robinson.    Thomas.    98, 
Rochford.    Earl   of.    US. 
Rock,   Dr..   212. 
Rogers.    Tom.   22.1. 
r.nlfe.    The    Key.    Edmund.    .320. 
Rolfe.    Robert   Mousey.    320. 
:Sose.    Mr..    78. 
Rushe,    Sir    Thomas.    26. 
Rust,    Dean.    273.    274. 
Rutland,    Duke  of.    441. 
Saftord.    Dr.   Thomas.  9(1.  91. 
Sally,    Crazy,    209. 
Saudcrs,    Dr.   Buck,   393, 
Savllle.  Sir  George.   280. 
Savoy.    Duke   of.   235. 
Saxby,    Dr..    330. 
Scott,   Claude  and  Co.,  303. 
Scott,    Reginald.  •-I'!!. 
Seott,    Sir   Walter.   ,50.   315, 
.Sedley.   Sir  Charles.  195. 
Seieuciis,    lOS. 
Seymour.    Algernon,   398. 
Shandy.   Mrs.,   481. 
Sharp.    Dr.    Sam.    292. 
Shaw.    Peter.    L'92. 
SheUield,    Lady.    2:i.S. 
Sheldon.   Dr.   .Tohn.   183, 
Sheustone,   :!0.   427. 
Sheppard.   II.    Fleetwood.   479. 
Sheridan.    R.    B..   395. 
Shirley,    Dr.    Thomas.   23. 
Short.   Dr.   Tliomas.   117. 
Sldmouth.    Lord.   393. 
Sligo.   Lord.   368.   370. 
Sloane.  Sir  Hans.  51.  68.  72.  96,  1«1. 

297.   393.   395,   421. 
Slop.    Dr..    4S1. 
Smart.    Dr..    316. 
Smith.    Adam.   493. 
Smith,  Sir  WllUam,  272, 


516 


INDEX. 


Smith.  Dr..  3S3. 

SmltbsoD.  Sir  Hugb.  39S. 

Smr.ll,.tt.   T.   G..   B9.   233.   333.   42«. 

Sols.'ious,  Chevailcr.  152. 

.S'  iuers^et.    Duke  of.  398. 

Southcole.  Joanna,   347. 

Spt'ncpr.    Lady.   349. 

Sprnl.    Bishop.    129. 

StHlIrjrd.    Dr..    145,    146. 

Staudlsh,    Dr..    484. 

Stouley.  Sir  Edward.  44. 

Stanley.    Vcnetla.   43. 

Steele.   Sir    Richard.     101.     120.     lon. 

400,   428.   463. 
Stephens.   Joanna.   2S,S,   2S9. 
Sterne,   Lnurencc    193.  428.  4S1. 
Slovve.  John.   19,' 171. 
Mrlckland.  Agnes,  243. 
Stunrt,   Charles  Edward,   193. 
Stubbe,    Dr.    Henry.    168,    273. 
Sutcllffe.    Dr.,    335. 
Swartenburgh.   Dr.  Sleur.   153. 
Swift.  Jonathan.  72,  73,  93,  132.   l.';0. 

1S7.    I8.S.    197.    314.    375.    4IX). 
Sydenham.   Dr..   51.  52. 
Sydney.    Sir    PblUr.    42. 
Sympathetlr  powder.   45. 
Talliir.   Lady.   33.   165. 
Talbot,  Sir  G.,  58.  381. 
Tantley.    .378. 
Tatler,   The,   126. 
Taylor.    Chevalier,   297.   299.   310,    352. 

355. 
Taylor,    John.    Jr..   302. 
Thackeray.   401. 
Tbeveneau,    Dr.,    238. 
Thompson.    Dr.,  67. 
Thornton,   Bonnel,    14. 
Thurlow,    Bishop.   355. 
Thurlow.    Lord.    12. 
Tissot,  102. 
Tovell.   John.   439. 
Townsend.   Dr..  83. 
Trelawny.  Sir  William.  430. 
Trevor,    Lord.    429. 
Tlike.    Col.,    37.    58. 
Turner,    Dr.,   29,   229. 
Turton.    Dr.    J..    161. 
Tysnn   of   Hackney.    143. 
Vallerlola.    264. 
V.in  Bochell.   Dr..  413. 
Taudepat,  Sir  George,  1S6. 


Vannlnus.   264. 

Ventadour.    M.    De,    235. 

Vespaalan,    261. 

Victoria,    Dr.   Fernandus  de,   21. 

Victoria,   Queen,   173. 

VlUars,    105.    106,    107    351. 

VoD   Elliliou.    Dr.,   283. 

Wadd.  Dr.   William,    174,  22S. 

Wakley,   .Mr..  366. 

Walker.    Obadlah.    129,    130. 

Walpole.    Horace,   234.   333. 

Walpole.    Kobert.  252.  314. 

Walsh.    Dr..   380. 

Waltham.  Mrs.  Margaret    481. 

Ward,    24S.    295.    297.    308. 

Ward's  pills.   96. 

Warren,    Dr..   211.    :>n4. 

Wat.son.   Sir  William.   161. 

Weathcrby.   Jo..    156. 

Wedderburne,    465. 

Weld.    Charles.    ,57. 

Wellington,    Duke  of.    193. 

Wendy.   Dr.   Thomas,   20.   164. 

Whichot.    Dr.    Benjamin.   272.  274. 

Whistler.    Dr..    113.    117. 

Whltaker.  Dr.  Tobias,   14S. 

Whltefnod.  The   KeT.  John,  40. 

WIerus,   264. 

Wigs.    15. 

Wilkes.    John,   381. 

Wllklns.    Dr.,    272. 

William  III.,    US,   119,    138,   198. 

IV.,   173. 
Williams.   Dr..   382. 
Willis.    Dr..    174.   394. 
Wilson,    217, 

WlngBeld,   Sir   Robert.    37. 
Wlnslow,    Dr.    Forbes.   53.   321. 
Winston,    Dr.   Thomas,   63. 
Wolcot.  John,  430. 
WollastoD.    Dr.    William    Hyde.    59. 
Wolsey,  Cardinal.  21. 
Wood.  Anthony  S,  .''15.  423. 
Woodhouse.   The    Hon.    rrancla.  298. 
Woodhouse.     Mrs..    288. 
Woodvllle.    Dr..    489. 
Woodward.    Dr.  John.   72.   248.  C7V. 
Wordsworth.    William.   59. 
Wrench.   Sir  B.  njamln.   313. 
Wyntcr.    Dr..   377.   379. 
Yaxley.   Dr.    Robert.  21. 


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